Con Game and restorative justice: Inventing the truth about Canada's prisons

Abstract

In his opening to a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation special program on prisons in Canada over a year ago, senior correspondent Brian Stewart noted: "There's nothing government does that is harder to get right than a prison system." Few people would disagree with this statement. Criminal justice advocates from across the political spectrum have argued their respective positions on the relative leniency or harshness of sentences of confinement since this particular form of punishment became dominant about two hundred years ago.