Ottawa's new omnibus crime bill could cost New Brunswick millions of dollars to imprison more people for longer lengths of time, according to a St. Thomas University criminologist.

Michael Boudreau, the chairman of Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, said the New Brunswick government is going to have to dig deep to cover new costs associated with the proposed federal legislation.

Boudreau said the omnibus bill means New Brunswick will have to hire more people for corrections, parole and enforcement, in addition to providing more spaces for inmates.

New Brunswick provincial prisons currently hold 300 prisoners and are regularly at capacity.

Two new regional jails are expected to open this year, including the $40-million Southeast Correction Centre in Shediac and the $16-million Dalhousie Correction Centre, which combined will hold 150 prisoners.

Michael Boudreau, a St. Thomas University criminologist, said the federal crime bills will add significant costs to the provinces. (CBC)Those two jails may arrive just in time to house new inmates that will be incarcerated because of the new federal laws.

When the United States opted to impose similar crime laws, Boudreau said some states became “prison poor” and the prison-related spending forced them into significant deficits.

“So if we are looking to the U.S. they are doing the opposite of what we are doing right now,” Boudreau said.

“They tried this path and they found that a) it did not reduce crime in any significant fashion and b) it led them into massive, massive deficits. So why we would want to follow that path, to me, is incomprehensible.”

The federal government’s decision to end the ability of judges to offer two days of credit for each day in jail awaiting trail caused the number of inmates and cost to increase dramatically.

"For the current fiscal year, 2011-2012, they are spending 20 per cent more on just daily run-of-the-mill operations of federal institutions," Boudreau said, citing Corrections Canada figures.

The New Brunswick government is building two new jails in Dalhousie and Shediac. (CBC) "That translates into roughly $458 million of new money that is being spent just to implement one of the measures that have been passed by the federal government. That's astronomical in terms of its increase."

The Parliamentary Budget Office estimated that the same legislation will cost $5 billion, more than doubling Corrections Canada's budget, over the next five years.

Public Safety Minister Robert Trevors would not comment on the costs of the omnibus bill to the province, saying only that the provincial government is revising its analysis on the issue.

The omnibus bill, styled as the Safe Streets and Communities Act, contains measures from nine bills that were before Parliament when the last federal election was called.

Corrections Canada estimates the cost of the criminal justice system will rise to $3 billion this fiscal year from $1.6 billion in 2006 when Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservatives took power.

Better options

Valerie McCallum, a spokesperson for the John Howard Society in Fredericton, said there is a much cheaper solution to crime.

"[It costs] $185,000 for a federal inmate, $149 a day for provincial inmates and we're going to do more of that, which means we're going to have to build bigger and more prisons," she said.

"We can do so much more at the street level."

She said a single 12-apartment subsidized housing facility in Fredericton saves governments $144,000 a year in criminal enforcement costs by giving people stability and preventing criminal behaviour.