Life in Alberta's Mounted Police Jails, 1905-1914‪.‬

Over the past two or three decades, historians have thrown considerable light on the operation of the criminal justice system in western Canada. Numerous studies have been published on the development of the law, the legal and social functions of police forces -- notably the Royal North-West Mounted Police (RNWMP) -- and the incidence and significance of various criminal offences.(1) However, there has been relatively little attention paid to the more mundane, background functions of the justice system, such as the daily operation of the jails themselves.(2) Given the current debate over the effectiveness of incarceration as a form of punishment or rehabilitation, and the problems associated with a growing prison population, it might be useful to consider such questions in the light of historical perspective. This paper is a tentative exploration of jail-room activity in Alberta in the years 1905 to 1914. It focuses mainly on the guard-rooms at the five provincial RNWMP divisional posts -- Lethbridge, Fort Macleod, Calgary, Fort Saskatchewan, and Peace River. During the time that Alberta made the transition from district to province the RNWMP played an important role by ensuring the criminal justice system a degree of continuity. As Commissioner A. Bowen Perry concluded in his 1912 report, "When the [new] provinces were formed, it was necessary to carry on the system then in force until they had time to erect the necessary buildings."(3) The annual reports of the RNWMP thus provide a coherent and reasonably consistent record of the problems faced by Alberta's penal system.