Maximum security Millhaven Institution one of two prisons to conduct pilot projects
Ottawa (11 Jan. 2007) - Federal prison guards in Canada will be authorized to test the use of stun guns as a new weapon to control inmates.
The tests will be carried out as a "strictly controlled and limited" pilot project later this year, reports the Kitchener-Waterloo Record. It quotes information obtained from Corrections Canada, through access to information legislation.
The six-month project will involve two maximum-security prisons, including Millhaven near Kingston, Ont. The second prison has not been identified.
Millhaven is the location of Guantanamo North, the small, intensely-secure "prison within a prison" opened by Ottawa last year to house terror suspects detained on the authority of security certificates. (The controversial certificates allow foreigners suspected of terrorist-related activities to be held without being charged.)
Stun guns will be stored in control posts with other weapons now used by federal guards, including firearms, pepper spray and batons, says Corrections spokesperson Guy Campeau. Their use will be restricted to emergency response teams, typically comprised of 15 to 20 officers.
'Intermediate' force
The new weapons are intended to provide an "intermediate" option for guards "between pepper spray and guns," he added. Training in the use of the new weapons has already taken place and the trials will begin sometime after the start of the new fiscal year on April 1.
Graham Stewart, executive director of the John Howard Society, says the decision raises concerns.
"I would be very concerned anytime you introduce weapons into that kind of an environment, particularly one that's as secretive as the prison environment," he told the newspaper. "I think there's real potential for abuse."
Some Ontario police already use stun guns. Alberta introduced stun guns in its provincial institutions in 2003. There are no plans to introduce the weapons in Ontario's provincial jail system.
In 2004, the Manitoba government was forced to intervene and stop the use of stun guns by a private company - Prairie Bylaw Enforcement Services - which had been hired by several rural municipalities to supervise bylaws such as noise complaints, improper parking and illegal campfires.
The Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU/NUPGE) represents provincial correctional workers in Ontario. Federal prison guards are members of the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers (UCCO). NUPGE
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