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| Canada Criminals Want to Sweeten Lives of Victims |
| By Reuters |
| Published: 10/21/2002 |
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Inmates serving life sentences in a Canadian prison want to make life sweeter for crime victims by starting a chocolate factory and donating the proceeds to charity, a spokesman said recently. Rene Durocher, an ex-convict who works with prisoners in Stony Mountain Penitentiary near Winnipeg, said he wants to train up to eight of the 508 inmates to make and sell boxed chocolates to the public. The money would go to help victims of crime, but Durocher admitted he does not know how Canadians would feel about eating soft-center chocolates made by criminals doing hard time. 'This is the question,' Durocher said. 'We have to be able to look further than what we feel and see the impact that good can do.' Durocher runs a program that arranges meetings between inmates serving life sentences, for crimes such as murder, and their victims. 'When you are an offender, you have to try to put a face on people. Then you are able to see and feel the pain from what you have done,' he said. Prisoners have donated more than $10,000 (Canadian) since 1999 to a victim fund administered by a third-party charitable foundation, from sales of silent auction tickets in the penitentiary. Durocher said it would take C$50,000 to start the chocolate factory, but said it will have to come from outside government. The government has not yet received a formal proposal for the chocolate factory, CSC spokesman Tim Krause said, but it would carefully review food safety issues before it could go ahead. The government would also have to determine whether the chocolate factory would raise commercial concerns about unfair competition because of inexpensive prison labor, he said. 'It is sometimes viewed as unfair by commercial producers if they see there is a production facility up and running in a federal penitentiary.' |
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