, built in 1845. Some small communities in Canada had small prisons and holding cells built to facilitate local incarnation The correction system in Canada dates to French and British colonial settlement, when all crimes were deemed deserving of punishment. Such was often meted out in public, as physical pain and humiliation were the preferred forms of punishment, including
whipping,
branding, and
pillorying. In other cases, offenders were transported to other countries and abandoned to their fate.
Execution was also used as punishment for serious crimes. In 1789, Philadelphian
Quakers in the United States introduced the
penitentiary as an alternative to such harsh punishment. The concept of long-term imprisonment eventually spread to England as an alternative to
exiling offenders to the
penal colonies, including Canada. The first penitentiary in
Upper Canada (present-day
Ontario) was opened in 1835 as the
Kingston Penitentiary. This facility was built by the
colonial government and, at the time of
Confederation in 1867, it was under provincial jurisdiction (of the Province of Ontario). It came under federal responsibility with the passage of the
Penitentiary Act in 1868. In 1859, the offences
punishable by death in Canada included
murder,
rape,
treason,
poisoning, or injuring a person with the intent to commit murder, mistreatment of a girl under 10 years of age, arson, among other things. As of 1869, only three offences were punishable by death: murder, rape, and treason. The federal government opened additional penitentiaries in other parts of Canada in decades following Confederation. An increase in crime during the
Great Depression saw a rapid increase in Canada's incarceration rate. The
Prison for Women opened in 1934. The
Archambault Commission (officially the Royal Commission to Investigate the Penal System in Canada) was established that year in response to riots, overcrowding, and strikes in Canadian prisons. The final report was published in 1938 and was the first comprehensive report in Canada to emphasize crime prevention and offender rehabilitation. In the 1960s, new approaches to rehabilitation and reintegration were adopted. The first 'gradual release' program was introduced at
Collins Bay Institution, wherein inmates were allowed to work outside the institution during the day and return in the evening. In 1969, an experimental living unit was opened at
medium-security Springhill Institution in
Nova Scotia, as part of a community pilot program to aid inmates in preparing themselves for "outside" life.
Capital punishment was abolished in Canada in 1976. Also in the 1960s and 1970s, various
halfway houses were opened, as well as governments and community groups taking on the essential needs of ex-inmates by providing them with room and board, and often helping them find work, enroll in school, and obtain counselling services. == Division of correctional systems ==