BATH, Ont. — This is the first part of a two-part series by CTV W5 that explores technological changes at Canada’s prison systems that are providing prisoners with new education opportunities, while Correctional Service Canada attempts to manage risks the new technology presents.
Canada’s federal prisons are introducing the internet to their prisoners for the first time, in a limited way geared to providing some inmates with educational courses and even virtual reality, W5 has learned.
It amounts to a technological revolution in the institutions where some inmates serving long sentences have never been online, as Correctional Service Canada wrestles with the advantages that new technology brings, while trying to avoid the risks.
W5 was given exclusive access to teachers and prisoners using the computers and software that has been installed in Bath Institution, near Kingston on the shores of Lake Ontario.
That’s where we found Daniel, one of the students using the online program. The inmate in his 30s is serving a sentence for the sexual assault of an ex-girlfriend, and asked that we not identify him to avoid impacting his victim.
He admits what he’s done, and he says he wants to use the program to improve his skills and help get a job when he gets out to reduce the chance he’ll reoffend.
“It’s hard to talk about,” Daniel said. “But I am here trying to get better. I don’t want to reoffend. The world doesn’t want that.”
But inmates like him face major challenges. Among them, an uphill battle against the statistics, which illustrate how people without a high school education are more likely to end up convicted of a crime, said project advisor Marci Beitner.
“About 75 per cent of offenders don’t have a high school diploma when they enter the institution. And that’s why it’s the priority for offenders who don’t have a Grade 12 level education, that they have the opportunity to upgrade their education towards a high school diploma,” Beitner said.
Canadian prisons have remained mostly internet-free, at least officially, for decades. Unofficially, however, access to the internet is commonplace, through smuggled cellphones.
In the federal system, officials confirmed there were 2,254 seizures of cellphones or items related to cellphones in 2022-23, each of which could include more than one phone.
The following year, federal numbers had risen by nearly 25 per cent to 2,784, the figures show.
“I’ve definitely seen some of the cellphones get in,” Daniel said in the interview, offering an explanation why prisoners are so desperate for them: “They want unrestricted access to the internet and unrestricted access to their family.”
But they have virtually no options, Daniel said.
“If they want to stay on the phone all day with their family, then they have got to purchase a phone on the black market, essentially,” he said.
It’s not just family communication – internet access while incarcerated can lead to continuing crime.
For example, W5 uncovered a case where one convicted romance scammer, Jon Mulder, appeared to set up an online dating account from behind bars in Ontario’s provincial jails.
In another case, Toronto rapper Top5, whose real name is Hassan Ali, shot an entire music video, while thanking the guards who smuggled the one in for him, he said, for $10,000.
The current internet setup will not allow inmates to email family members, said Corrections’ Chief Information Officer Stephane Blanchard.
But it is something that the prison is considering as part of a digital strategy that could cut down on the demand for contraband phones, he said.
“If we were to provide email for some offenders in the future, maybe they would not resort to other types of access to have these emails sent out,” he said.
It’s not the first time that inmates have had access to the internet in Canada – in provincially run jails in New Brunswick and in Nova Scotia, inmates have access to tablet computers that can access a variety of news sites.
One factor is the federal corrections system is facing a lawsuit that claims the internet ban blocks access to post-secondary courses is unconstitutional, because it infringes freedom of expression, and says the lack of technology hinders inmates’ reintegration into society.
Right now, the federal prisons’ computers can only access high school courses, Blanchard said, adding that there are four layers of security to prevent anything criminal taking place, from locked-down computers, to software limited to a learning management system, to a monitored connection.
The final security layer is human, he said, with a teacher watching the inmates as they answer questions on the tests in the classroom.
The price is about $800 per station, with about an $80 licence fee per year.
“We would say that the cost is outweighed by the benefits, in the sense that this is changing lives,” Blanchard said.
Daniel showed off creative writing projects he had done in the system, as well as an essay related to art the inmates can access on the screens.
Daniel said that he graduated Grade 12 recently using the software. He said he hoped that the diploma would mean he could get stable work on the outside – and not ever return to the prison system.
“Two months later, I was walking across the stage for graduation as valedictorian. If you’d told me I’d have been valedictorian 10 years ago, I would have laughed at you,” he said.
For tips about the prison system, or any other story, please email Jon Woodward.
