The Vantour Report considered the goals of the penitentiary system in terms of a descending order of priorities, with control as the first priority, dealing with the offender individually and humanely as the second, and providing appropriate correctional opportunities in order to achieve the successful reintegration of the offender into the community as the third. The report concluded:

In order to ensure that the Director can perform this total role, his authority to segregate disruptive or dangerous inmates is very broad and vague and the procedure by which he exercises his authority is simple and swift ...Given the nature of the inmate community and the goals of the penitentiary, segregation of certain inmates is necessary in order to protect both staff and inmates and maximize the rehabilitative potential of the institution ...The Study Group acknowledges the need for this type of preventive administrative act and therefore agrees in principle with Penitentiary Service Regulation 2.30(1)(a). 3

There is something disarming in the forthrightness of this justification for administrative segregation. The quoted statements identify as the subjects of segregation those prisoners who refuse to accept the degrading and dehumanizing effects of imprisonment. Their resistance, however, is not seen as a challenge for change and reform but as the justification for further oppression. There can surely be no quarrel with a rationale for segregation that focuses on prisoners who are persistently violent toward other prisoners or staff. However, the Vantour rationale for the broad discretionary power of section 2.30 is much more generally cast. It rejects any role of prisoner leadership that is anything other than compliant and submissive. Leadership that calls into question and challenges the legitimacy of penitentiary authority is deemed to demonstrate emotional and attitudinal maladjustment. The Vantour Report is correct indeed in contrasting the prison world with that of free society. But its rationale for segregation reinforces not the legitimization of authority but rather the prisoners’ perception of its illegitimacy.

The report sought to identify what it termed 'the principle and goal of segregation.’4

Segregation must become a more integral part of the institutional programming. Long-term segregation cases are presently confined in institutions which are not designed for them. These inmates are, as we have pointed out, isolated and forgot ten. There appears to be very little administrative intent behind their present situation ...

We have concluded that the most severe hardship for most inmates is the deprivation of association. Therefore, the privilege which has the most meaning for segregated inmates is the privilege of association ...Indeed, the ultimate goal of the criminal justice system is the reintegration of the offender into the community -adjustment to life outside the prison -and the basic fact of that life is asso ciation. Similarly, the ultimate goal of a segregation unit ought to be to return the segregated inmate to association, albeit in a maximum security institution, as soon as possible.

This goal can best be achieved through a principle of gradual monitored reintegration of segregated inmates into the population. Such a principle has the following benefits:

• It provides the staff with a means of evaluating the inmate in a manner that is ‘measurable’ -through observation of his behaviour in the company of staff and other inmates ...
• It provides the inmate with the opportunity to earn his way out of segregation, thus alleviating the atmosphere of hopelessness which characterizes segregation units at present.
• It eliminates the shock that may accompany a sudden reintegration into the population, and thus represents a ‘decompression’ phase in which the change in his routine is gradual and controlled.

If segregation is recognized as a crucial aspect of institutional life, and the sys- tem is serious about the problem of the persistently disruptive and dangerous inmate, then the Penitentiary Service must commit itself to the utilization of physical and human resources for these inmates. Segregation facilities must have appropriate living, working and exercise space. There must be both security and programme staff charged with the sole responsibility of the persistently disruptive inmate. That is, facilities must be designed to accommodate these inmates. Some staff must be there for the express purpose of their custody and treatment.5

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