CTV News has learned that roughly a quarter of convicted murderers are serving time in minimum-security prisons -- open-concept, communal-style institutions that lack traditional wired fences with armed guards.
There are currently 2,984 murderers in prison. Documents show that 22.5 per cent of those serving time for first-degree murder are in minimum-security institutions, along with 30 per cent of inmates convicted of second-degree murder. Combined, it’s 27.5 per cent.
“They can be a very stable and stabilizing influence in the prison and they’re not embedded in the crime culture, which can create problems in the institutions,” said Catherine Latimer, the executive director of the John Howard's Society, a non-profit advocating for prison reform.
“It's not unusual to find a lot of them in minimum institutions.”
Inmates convicted of murder are automatically sent to a maximum security facility for two years. And then, with good behaviour and a review, they can be relocated to a medium-security prison and eventually end up in a minimum-security institution.
In minimum security prisons, there’s more social programs, more independent living, and no traditional wired fences -- all with the aim of rehabilitating inmates back into society.
Latimer said a prisoner’s risk of escaping is assessed before they are moved down a security level.
Erin O'Toole, the conservative federal MP for Dunham, said nobody convicted of murder should be in a minimum-security institution and called the practice “outrageous.”
“First and second-degree murder (means) they have taken the lives of other Canadians,” he said. “They should be in prison and not in a camp or campus-like setting.”
He added that the option to transfer down a security level shouldn’t be offered to violent offenders but reserved for those convicted of things like “property crime where there is no risk to the public.”
The issue of prisoner transfers in the Canadian system has been in the national spotlight recently with the cases of Michael Rafferty and Terri-Lynne McClintic, the convicted killers of eight-year-old Tori Stafford.
In November, McClintic, who’d been serving a life sentence for her role in the rape and murder of Tori, had briefly been transferred out of Grand Valley Institution for Women in Kitchener, Ont. into an Indigenous healing lodge.
But she was promptly forced back into prison, after several heated exchanges in the House of Commons from MPs questioning how she had been allowed to transfer out.
The national debate forced Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale to order a review of the practice of transferring prisoners to healing lodges.
Rafferty, meanwhile, was moved to a medium-security prison.
Tori’s father Rodney Stafford said it felt like “repeated slaps in the face by not just Correctional Service Canada but our government as well.”
Wilma Derksen also knows the pain of losing a child. In November 1984, her teenage daughter disappeared on her way home from school in Winnipeg and her body was found six weeks later.
She also knows the anguish of learning that her child’s killer is out of prison. But she says she understands why transfers and paroles are meant to make communities safer once inmates are eventually released.
“It feels really good to think about them sitting in a cage, in isolation alone,” she told CTV News. “It feels better. But I know it's also creating more aggressive and violent offenders.”
A statement from the ministry of public safety noted that “while not all inmates will be granted conditional release by the parole board, it is the correctional service’s role to prepare them for that possibility.”
“Canadians are better protected when offenders are gradually prepared for supervised release,” it added. “The alternative -- releasing offenders ‘cold turkey’ from maximum security into our communities -- is far less safe.”
