Dear Editor,
(RE: John Howard Society ready for Kemptville prison, December 23, 2020)
While I fully respect and admire the work conducted by the John Howard Society, the value of their much needed work is not really the issue currently faced by our community. The article understandably did not deal with the more pressing issues of existing problems with the justice system, nor the solutions that would drastically reduce the need for more prisons, nor about building a prison in Kemptville, nor the better alternatives for the use of the land. And even though the society receives funding from the province, and works closely with many of the agencies involved in the prison system, they too were not consulted before the provincial government’s announcement.
The province’s proposed prison is being imposed on all of us, and we shouldn’t take it for granted that we can’t do anything about it. The most important thing, in my view, is for the province to show us the research they did to land on Kemptville as the proposed site for the prison, and to back up their claims of community benefits with credible evidence. In the absence of such information, none of us, including Municipal Council, should support this project.
Victor Lachance
