The Battle Over Prison Construction
How a small Ontario town fought the federal government and exposed the myths behind correctional facilities
On a freezing night in December 1976, the residents of Uxbridge, Ontario, walked into voting booths to decide the fate of their quiet community. The ballot posed a single, volatile question regarding prison construction within their township. For months, the issue had torn the town apart, pitting neighbor against neighbor and the municipal council against the people it represented. The federal government had promised jobs, money, and security. The residents saw only danger, stigma, and the destruction of their rural way of life. By the time the votes were counted, a political career was over, a federal plan was in tatters, and a stark lesson had been delivered to the Canadian bureaucracy: you cannot build a prison without the consent of the people who have to live next to it.
The conflict in Uxbridge was not an isolated incident. It was a symptom of a massive blind spot in the Canadian correctional strategy of the 1970s. Seven years earlier, the Canadian Committee on Corrections had released a report recommending that future prisons be smaller and located near major urban centers to facilitate rehabilitation. It was a logical, clinical decision made by experts in Ottawa. They argued that proximity to universities and families would help reintegrate offenders. Unfortunately, the committee failed to ask the most important question of all. Would the public accept a prison as a neighbor?
This oversight triggered a crisis of confidence that led the Canadian Penitentiary Service to commission Joseph Scanlon of Carleton University to figure out what had gone wrong. Scanlon’s 1977 report, titled Correctional Institutions and the Communities Near Them, provides a rare, cinematic glimpse into the anatomy of public resistance. It details how misinformation, fear, and a lack of hard data turned a bureaucratic proposal into a community war.
The Blueprint for Prison Construction Failure
The strategy employed by the federal government to sell prison construction to Uxbridge was essentially an economic pitch. In May 1975, the Regional Director of the Canadian Penitentiary Service sent a letter to the Township of Scugog and later Uxbridge. The letter proposed a “regional reception centre,” a euphemism for a maximum-security intake facility. The government promised a capital investment of up to ten million dollars, a staff of one hundred and fifty people, and an annual operating budget of three million dollars. They dangled the prospect of a grant in lieu of taxes, suggesting it would be a financial windfall for the municipality.
The initial reaction from the local councils was interest. Like any small town government, they were hungry for growth and revenue. The council in Scugog, and later Uxbridge, saw the prison as an industry—clean, recession-proof, and government-backed. They believed in the economic multiplier effect, assuming that federal dollars would flow into local hardware stores, gas stations, and grocery aisles.
However, the federal representatives had badly misjudged the sophistication and the skepticism of the electorate. When the proposal became public, the community did not see dollar signs. They saw walls, guards, and criminals. A group calling itself the “Stop The Pen” committee formed almost immediately in Scugog, circulating open letters that dismantled the government’s economic arguments. They pointed out that federal institutions purchase through central supply depots, not local shops. They argued that the specialized staff would be transferred in from Kingston or Ottawa, not hired from the local labor pool.
The opposition was not just economic. It was visceral. Residents feared that property values would plummet. They worried about the “prison town” stigma that would attach to their address. They terrified one another with scenarios of escapes, hostage-takings, and the families of inmates moving into the neighborhood to be near their incarcerated relatives. The debate quickly shifted from tax grants to the safety of children walking to school.
A Town Divided by Fear and Rumor
As the resistance in Scugog grew too hot, the federal gaze shifted slightly west to Uxbridge. In July 1975, the Uxbridge Times-Journal editorialized in favor of the project, calling it a dramatic but positive change for the area. The Regional Councillor for Uxbridge reached out to the penitentiary service, eager to secure the facility that Scugog was rejecting.
The backlash was instantaneous.
Joseph Scanlon’s report documents the escalation of hostilities with journalistic precision. The pro-prison councillor began receiving hate mail. Anonymous letters arrived at his home. One read, “When they escape from the goddam prison I hope they get you first.” The debate moved from the council chambers to the streets, the grocery stores, and the dinner tables of the township.
A group called the Durham Penitentiary Review Committee, or DPRC, mobilized to fight the proposal. They were organized, articulate, and relentless. They understood that in the absence of hard facts, fear is the most powerful political motivator. They published ballots in the local paper, urging residents to vote “no.” They distributed flyers warning that the “reception centre” would inevitably expand into a massive penal complex. They quoted prison guards who described the brutality of their work and the toll it took on their families.
The federal government attempted to counter this with a public relations campaign, but it was a disaster of timing and tone. They hired consultants and organized open houses, but the officials who arrived to speak were often unprepared for the ferocity of the questioning. When they claimed that property values would rise, they had no data to prove it. When they said the facility was secure, the opposition pointed to recent news of escapes and violence in other institutions.
The turning point came when the bureaucracy tried to force the issue. The Department of Public Works began quietly appraising farms for potential sites, even as the town was still debating the concept. When a purchasing agent was caught scouting land, the distrust exploded. The DPRC accused the council of arrogance and the federal government of duplicity. They framed the upcoming municipal election as a referendum on the town’s identity.
The Reality of Correctional Economics
While Uxbridge was engulfed in a war of words, a separate team of researchers was quietly gathering data in Warkworth, Ontario. Warkworth was home to a medium-security federal institution that had been operating for nine years. Scanlon dispatched Heather Tully, a psychology student, to find out what actually happens when a prison comes to town. Her findings, included in the report, offered a stark counterpoint to the hysteria in Uxbridge.
The Warkworth study revealed that both the government’s promises and the community’s fears were largely illusions.
Economically, the prison was not the goldmine the government claimed. While the institution had a payroll of four million dollars, the local purchasing impact was negligible. The Warkworth prison bought its supplies through regional contracts. The local lumber yard and creamery were bypassed in favor of large-scale tenders from outside the area. As one former director admitted, they bought their cheese from Montreal, despite being in the heart of Ontario’s cheese country.
However, the DPRC’s economic doomsday predictions were equally unfounded. Land values in Warkworth had not collapsed. In fact, real estate prices near the prison had appreciated at the same rate as the rest of the province. One farm down the road from the prison had doubled in value in five years.
Socially, the “prison town” stigma had failed to materialize. The study found that while some families of inmates had moved to the area, they were few in number and lived quietly. There was no crime wave. The escapes that did occur involved inmates walking away from minimum-security settings, usually to leave the area immediately, rather than terrorizing the locals.
The most fascinating revelation from Warkworth was the invisibility of the institution. It provided its own water and sewage, placing no strain on municipal services. It was physically unobtrusive. Most of the time, the town simply ignored it. The terrifying “monster” that Uxbridge residents imagined was, in reality, a quiet, self-contained government building that employed a few hundred people and bought a few trophies from the local sports shop.
The Verdict of the People
The facts from Warkworth came too late to save the project in Uxbridge. By the winter of 1976, the lines were drawn. The “Stop The Pen” movement had successfully framed the issue as a defense of rural life against federal encroachment.
The climax arrived on December 6, 1976, during the municipal election. Voter turnout surged to sixty percent, a massive increase from the thirty-nine percent turnout in the previous election. The referendum on the ballot was simple: “Are you in favor of the Canadian Penitentiary Service establishing a regional reception centre in the Township of Uxbridge?”
The result was a landslide. The “No” votes totaled 2,809. The “Yes” votes were a mere 970.
The political fallout was immediate. The mayor and the regional councillor, who had championed the project, were both swept out of office, defeated by candidates backed by the opposition committee. On January 3, 1977, the new council passed a motion formally rejecting the reception centre. They thanked the Canadian Penitentiary Service for its interest but told them to look elsewhere.
The Cost of Ignorance
The Battle of Uxbridge was a humiliating defeat for the Canadian Penitentiary Service, but it was a necessary one. It exposed the fundamental flaw in the government’s approach to prison construction and community relations. They had attempted to impose a major industrial facility on a rural community without understanding the social or psychological terrain.
Scanlon’s report concluded that the government had been flying blind. They had no data to refute the emotional arguments of the opposition. They could not prove that property values would stay stable because they had never studied it. They could not reassure parents about safety because they had no statistics on inmate interactions with the community. They relied on economic platitudes that were easily debunked by skeptical citizens.
The report recommended a radical shift in strategy. It argued that if the government wanted to build prisons near communities, it had to arm itself with facts. It needed to commission rigorous studies on the economic, social, and psychological impacts of existing institutions. It needed to prove, with data, that a prison is a safe and stable neighbor.
More importantly, the Uxbridge saga demonstrated that in the absence of transparency, rumors become reality. The residents filled the information vacuum with their worst nightmares. They equated a modern reception centre with the violent, high-walled fortresses of the movies. Without a strategy to engage the public and respect their concerns, the federal government was doomed to face a “Stop The Pen” committee in every town they approached.
The legacy of Uxbridge is a testament to the power of local democracy. A group of farmers, homeowners, and business people stood up to the federal machine and won. They proved that a community’s identity cannot be bought with grants in lieu of taxes. And they taught the planners in Ottawa a lesson that remains relevant today: you can draw blueprints for a building, but you cannot engineer acceptance.
Source Documents
Scanlon, J. (1977, March). A Preliminary Report: Correctional Institutions and the Communities Near Them. Carleton University.