History
Throughout much of the early to mid-twentieth century a break-away group of Doukhobors known as the Sons of Freedom protested against perceived government interference or injustice through acts of nudity and arson. Mountain Institution was opened in 1962 as a special provincial prison for these Sons of Freedom. Its construction, to discourage traditional burning of buildings that characterized their method of protest, consisted of all metal living units. In 1969 it became a federal prison for offenders and inmates requiring protective custody. This is no longer the case as the only federal prison in BC that has a specialized protective custody section is Kent Institution. The remaining facilities are integrated.
In 1999 the CSC undertook an extensive rebuilding of the site. It was enlarged and the old living units, which were basically of partitioned dormitory style, were torn down and replaced with three modern 60-unit buildings. Also replaced were the dining hall/kitchen, school, health-care and other institutional facilities.
Mountain Institution has a rated capacity of 480 inmates and, as of 2012, had an inmate count of 391. There are additionally 16 beds in segregation. It offers several rehabilitation programs for offenders including violence prevention, sex offender and substance abuse programming.
In November 2010, Jeremy Phillips (33) was murdered by his cellmate, serial killer Michael Wayne McGray. Inmate McGray plead guilty to the crime a year later. This was his seventh murder conviction though he boasted of 10 others.
Read more about this topic: Mountain Institution
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The awareness that health is dependent upon habits that we control makes us the first generation in history that to a large extent determines its own destiny.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“The history of any nation follows an undulatory course. In the trough of the wave we find more or less complete anarchy; but the crest is not more or less complete Utopia, but only, at best, a tolerably humane, partially free and fairly just society that invariably carries within itself the seeds of its own decadence.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“What is most interesting and valuable in it, however, is not the materials for the history of Pontiac, or Braddock, or the Northwest, which it furnishes; not the annals of the country, but the natural facts, or perennials, which are ever without date. When out of history the truth shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates like withered leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)