Distinctly Mad

For want of a better descriptive. We are, as a society, so utterly concerned for the well-being of individuals whom we incarcerate in penal institutions as punishment for the universal societal unwillingness to harbour in our midst and permit to roam the civil landscape, those who take the lives of others that we enact legislation to ensure that their human rights are never abrogated, though they've taken human lives.

Justice done is one thing, bending over backwards to prove how sensitive we are to the tender needs of murderers is quite another. The latest bit of utter, contemptible nonsense comes out of a prison in Ontario where a killer was awarded six thousand dollars in damages from Correctional Services of Canada.

This man, during the course of a six-day rampage, managed to kill a police officer in Minnesota, and three other people in Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec. The man managed to get around. He's been in prison for the past thirty years, having served a life sentence in the United States, then being extradited to Canada to pay for his crimes here.

He's an American citizen, now 50, serving life sentences after pleading guilt to one count of second-degree murder and two of manslaughter in Canada. He's been incarcerated in several different Canadian prisons, the latest being medium-security Fenbrook Institution near Gravenhurst, Ontario.

He's a hefty brute at 260 pounds and likes to take care of himself, working out at least an hour a day, with a physical fitness protocol. He has very large feet, wearing size 13EEEE, and insists on Corrections Canada providing New Balance shoes for him, annually, which was done routinely while he was held at Collins Bay Institution.

At Fenbrook he was informed b a senior procurement official that "My budget does not allow me to purchase New Balance, and if you want New Balance you can purchase [them] yourself", offering instead Brooks shoes, which appeared to be inadequate for the width of his feet, so he refused to accept them.

In his claim against Corrections Canada he insisted that the worn New Balance shoes caused him to suffer a knee injury while working out. An injury from which he continues to suffer pain. How's that for perspective; he murdered four people, they can no longer feel anything. Their families feel the pain of loss. He sought $50,000 in damages, but was granted instead $6,000, along with legal costs.

"The evidence shows that the Defendant [Corrections Canada] dragged its feet in ordering the correct shoes for [Gregory] McMaster and improperly tried to convince him to accept the ill-fitting shoes. The Directive requires that the Plaintiff be issued new shoes on an annual basis", ordered the Prothonotary of the Federal Court.

It's utterly asinine that society is invested in holding such unrepentant malefactors in places of criminal asylum to ensure that they pay their just due to society for having so unforgivably taken the lives of other human beings. And then adding insult to injury by being forced to take the criminal's health and comfort into account.

Nineteenth-century penal colonies such as Australia no longer exist in our shrinking world, and more's the pity. Should we ever colonize the moon, it mightn't be a bad idea to send pathological destroyers of other humans there to fend for themselves.