Do Ontarians really want to see criminals cleaning up their parks?

It worked for Rob Ford. It worked for Stephen Harper. And now, Tim Hudak hopes, it will work for him.

With his promise to bring back forced and unpaid manual labour for prison inmates, the Ontario Progressive Conservative Leader is going straight for the gut.

It’s not an accident that Mr. Hudak’s most populist policy announcement to date was delivered on the eve of a party convention at which he will unveil his long-awaited platform – his best chance to define himself to voters. He is presenting himself as a man who has little time for the chattering classes, the academics and lawyers and newspaper columnists who will recoil from the spectre of reviving chain gangs, and all the time in the world for the people he describes as “hard-working Ontarians who play by the rules.”

There could be no more visceral evocation of that pitch than the prospect of law-abiding families rubber-necking at criminals from provincial prisons cleaning up their local park, or picking up trash along the highway, or cleaning graffiti off city walls – the main activities that Mr. Hudak said he has in mind. And if the policy merits don’t really add up, that’s somewhat beside the point.

There are good reasons no other province has gone anywhere near what Mr. Hudak is proposing. Unlike other prison work, including what’s offered on a voluntary basis in federal prisons, it would serve no rehabilitative purpose by teaching professional skills. There is little evidence to suggest it would be a deterrent to committing crimes in the first place. The Tories’ claims that it would be revenue neutral, considering the costs of transporting and supervising the prisoners, seem dubious. And they could run into all kinds of problems with contract workers who are currently paid to do some of the tasks they want inmates to do for free.

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