It wasn’t the chain-gang image that might come to mind when you think of prisoners doing outdoor work for the state, but for just over a week in late September a group of inmates from Grande Cache Institution did some hard labour on behalf of Parks Canada at Wabasso Campground.

No orange jumpsuits, ankle cuffs or shotgun-toting prison wardens here. If you didn’t know better, in fact, and just happened to drive by the campground at some point during the week of Sept. 19, you probably wouldn’t have even glanced twice at the men chainsawing wood or taking out buffaloberry bushes with some industrial-strength weed whackers.

But there is reason to take notice of this work-release program – and it’s not just because federal officials are putting heavy-duty power tools in the hands of convicted criminals and letting them roam around relatively freely. Surely, there will be some in our community who react with fear and suspicion to such a practice, and such a reaction is even more likely in light of the fact that one of the prisoners escaped from custody last week.

Dennis Haines’ decision to flee the campsite didn’t do any favours to supporters of the initiative, such as ourselves here at the Fitzhugh. His escape, in fact, prompted us to pull the editorial we originally planned to publish in last week’s edition, as it lauded the work-release initiative for simultaneously saving taxpayer dollars and giving these convicted criminals a chance to turn their lives around. The editorial also argued that the risks associated with the program are small when compared to the benefits and noted the participating inmates “have much greater incentive to co-operate with the program than take it a chance to escape.”

So much for that point, we figured. 

But, upon further reflection and yet another late-breaking development – namely Haines’ arrest near Christina Lake, B.C., on Sunday – it seemed the original editorial needed little editing after all.

The questionable actions of one inmate aside, the program still offered enormous benefits to the other two. Chris Holm and Chad Waldner took advantage of the opportunity and saw it as a way to help set their lives on a better track. You can read about their stories on pages 2 and 3. It’s a shame their work at Wabasso was cut short, but it would be an even greater shame if the same opportunity weren’t afforded to other inmates in the future as a result of Haines’ perplexing choice to run away from the campground.

Indeed, his decision to flee does not seem rational, considering that he was serving a 10-year sentence and only had about a year and a half left before he would be eligible for parole. His work at Wabasso and his earlier participation in other work-release programs at Grande Cache would have made him an excellent candidate for release, too. And yet he threw that all away for less than a week of “freedom” which ended with him being arrested by police after reportedly passing out drunk on the side of a B.C. highway.

Before the inmates even arrived for their first day of work at Wabasso, Chris Whitty from Parks Canada described them all as “very low risk” prisoners. He was careful, however, not to say that there was no risk. We think that remains an accurate description of the work-release program.

Everything in life comes with some degree of risk. In this case, it still seems like the potential positives of the program outweigh the potential negatives. Hopefully it will continue, perhaps with some changes to the way prisoners are supervised.