Earl Jones Prison Update- Life is Good..

For most of us, Earl Jones is just a dim memory, a Montreal fraud artist who had his fifteen minutes of fame last year, where through a cruel and maleficent fraud, he conned his friends and family, a genteel and proud group of seniors, out of approximately fifty million dollars.
For many of his victims, mostly Anglo retirees in Montreal's west island, Jones' escapade cost them their comfortable retirement, with many forced to sell their homes and some forced to survive on the largess and generosity of family. Some are even less fortunate with nothing and nobody to fall back on.

So annoyed was the public at the thought of Jones benefiting from early parole that would see him serve just 21 months of an eleven year sentence, that a successful lobbying campaign was undertaken on the Harper government that saw the scrapping of the law that allowed non-violent first time offenders to serve as little as one-sixth of their sentence.

At first there was a bit of confusion as to whether the new law would affect Jones as he was convicted under the old law, but it is confirmed that he will not be getting out this Christmas and will probably serve almost four years, at a minimum.

For victims who wanted to see Jones serve 'hard' time in a Federal penitentiary, it was never in the cards. These institutions are reserved for murderers, mafiosi, bikers and other violent criminals. For Jones, it was off to minimum security prison in the federal institution, SAINTE-ANNE-DES-PLAINES INSTITUTION  located about a forty minute drive north of Montreal.

The prison holds under 200 prisoners housed in two dormitories with a few lucky inmates (sixteen) housed in one of four on-site apartments, where four inmates share a unit in an exercise in rehabilitative communal living. There are no locks on the doors but head counts are done several times a day.

Guess where Earl is?

Yes, Earl is the beneficiary of a place in one of those fine apartments which includes separate bedrooms and a kitchen where inmates can cook up a storm by themselves. Each week, Earl and his co-locs, are allowed out of the prison to do a little grocery shopping at the local Provigo.

Earl had been ill, suffering from cancer (melanoma?) but seems to be doing okay now. He has secured a job in the administration offices (if you can believe it) of the prison and perhaps his training includes lessons in how not to fraud up documents. At any rate I hope they are not letting him fill out requisition forms!

As for family visits, my source couldn't enlighten me if Earl enjoys contact with his wife. It is known that during his trial Earl was seen entering and exiting the then home of his wife on Grosvenor Avenue in the tony Westmount district of Montreal.
 
Minimum security prisoners are afforded conjugal visits (PFV's or private family visits)  and un-escorted day and weekend passes (ETA's & UTA's) as well as work release programs.
Of course prisoners enjoy all sorts of distractions including television and computers, which supports the Canadian minimum security penal philosophy of incarceration, not punishment.

And so life is pretty laid back at the prison, not much worse than boarding school and the only real punishment is having your freedom taken away. Other then that it's a pretty soft gig.

As for having any money stashed, it remains a mystery. Jones had some pretty pricey legal council represent him at his trial, which wouldn't make sense for someone who is broke.
He remains in contact with the law firm via regularly scheduled phone calls. Hmmm......

For a more detailed review of what life is like in a Canadian minimum security facility, here's a CBC article.