When the daily papers first started reporting that the Ontario government would turn over the operation of a new maximum-security prison to an American company, I expected a media storm. The Mike Harris government leasing out prisons to U.S. corporations? It seemed tailor-made for front-page headlines and the floor of the Ontario legislature.

To my surprise, however, the story soon went away. The government was not forthcoming with much information, and the media didn’t really pursue it.

National, the magazine of the Canadian Bar Association, had a strong interest in this matter, however.Writing for members of the legal profession across the country, we felt that this was an issue that directly affected not just thousands of defence lawyers, Crown prosecutors and judges, but also the integrity of the justice system itself.

I had been keeping an eye on private prisons in the United States, particularly the abuses taking place at prisons run by industry giants Wackenhut and Corrections Corporation of America.

It was clear that private prisons had no incentive to rehabilitate inmates or help them reintegrate into society; in fact, the economic imperative of such prisons was to ensure recidivism, to keep beds occupied.

The horror stories coming out of these prisons boded poorly for Penetanguishene.

The government eventually chose Utah-based Management Training Corporation (MTC), one of the better-behaved prison companies, as the operator of the Penetanguishene jail. But even if this company was to run a “model jail,” there were still serious ethical and policy questions about whether society should turn this key aspect of criminal justice over to private interests.

Casting about for a good writer for an important story, I eventually contacted Patti Ryan, an Ottawa-based freelancer with whom I hadn’t dealt before but whose work had come highly recommended. It was an excellent choice.

Patti Ryan :

As a freelancer, I’m a generalist; I had never written for a law magazine,nor had I given the matter of what goes on at prisons much thought. I was, however, familiar with the Harris government’s reflexive drive to privatize, and the idea of writing about what might be wrong with this particular experiment appealed to me.

After I accepted the assignment, Jordan provided me with a large manila envelope stuffed to capacity with research he’d done — hundreds of pages, peppered with post-it notes,margin scrawlings and highlighted passages. It looked like a thesis in the making,and I wondered how I would eventually tell the whole story in the assigned 3,000 words.

When I was ready to begin, I started with the activists who had vocally opposed the private prison in Penetanguishene for some time.

I tracked down Sharon Dion, a local resident who had formed a group called Citizens Against Private Prisons.We talked about her concerns, and what response she’d received from the government. She recommended other key players for me to talk to.

After that, I looked at extensive research conducted on private prisons in Australia, the U.K. and the U.S. I looked at reports generated by independent consulting firms. I interviewed specialists at various think tanks. I spoke to lawyers who had been on the Canadian Bar Association’s Imprisonment & Release Committee. I searched for articles in the databases of newspapers in American towns and cities where private prisons were located.

I found out that Robert F. Hagan, the Ohio senator responsible for a district housing a private prison where multiple serious transgressions had occurred, had written a letter to Premier Harris to persuade him not to privatize the Penetanguishene jail. I obtained a copy of the letter and included an excerpt from it in the story.

It started to seem less a question of looking for dirt and more a question of dodging the dirt that seemed to fall on me everywhere I looked.

The wrongdoings in privately run prisons in the U.S.and Australia were astounding in terms of their ultimate consequences, their violent nature and their sheer volume. Despite a growing bias against private prisons, I wanted to turn in a balanced report.

I let spokesmen from conservative think-tanks have their say. I gave sources from MTC plenty of room to talk,and presented fair and accurate information about their company, which did have a relatively clean record compared to their competitors.

I gave Rob Sampson, provincial Correctional Services Minister, ample opportunity to talk about his motives and plans.

The biggest challenge was sorting the useful facts from the rhetoric (of which there was plenty, on both sides), sticking to those facts, and presenting them in an engaging way. I had been assigned a 3,000-word story, but I ended up submitting almost 5,000 words, including a sidebar documenting abuses and scandals at various American private prisons.

The story was tightly written, packed to its rafters with compelling facts that nobody else seemed to be writing about.

I expected that Jordan might need to chop it almost in half to meet space constraints, but he preserved the integrity of the story and cut very little. In fact, he added to it.

Jordan Furlong :

Jordan Furlong is editor-in-chief of National, the magazine of the Canadian Bar Association.

Patti Ryan is an Ottawa-based freelance writer.