Nunavik young offenders sometimes housed in Montreal hotels: MNA

The Liberal public security critic recently raised concerns about the lack of services for violent young offenders from Nunavik in Quebec’s National Assembly, shown here.

Violent youth offenders from Nunavik have been staying for more than three weeks at hotels in Dorval, due to overcrowding at provincial facilities.

That’s the troubling situation raised April 16 in Quebec’s National Assembly by Robert Poëti, the Liberal public security critic.

“The usual procedure for these young people accused of major crimes is to be transferred to two specialized centres in Montreal,” Poëti said. Those centres are Batshaw Youth and Family Centres and the Cité-des-Prairies youth detention centre.

But these two facilities are overcrowded and now “the government has found an alternative,” he said.

The alternative is to temporarily house youth offenders in a hotel, sometimes for more than three weeks.

“We are talking about young dangerous criminals. One is accused of killing a woman and another of aggravated sexual assault,” he said. “These young offenders live alongside customers and tourists in a hotel in Dorval.”

Poëti said the lack of resources is affecting public safety.

“The presence of such people in a hotel is highly disturbing and poses a security problem for users of the hotel, in addition to increasing their risk of escape, not to mention the costs associated with this exercise.”

While the youth were at the hotel, they were under 24-hour guard and ate take-out food from restaurants.

After Poëti spoke, Quebec’s minister of public security, Stéphane Bergeron, first said he would look into the matter.

But shortly afterwards, he said that because the youth were under 18, they fall under the responsibility of the minister of social services youth protection, Véronique Hivon, who recently visited Nunavik with a group from Quebec City.

During that trip, Nunavik health and social services officials lobbied for more and better local infrastructure as well as increased training for Inuit.

A specialized youth detention centre is among Nunavik’s needs, Tulattavik health centre program director Michel Boileau said.

Right now, the seven to ten Nunavik youth who need to be in detention compete for only 36 beds for all English-speaking youth in Quebec at the two Montreal youth detention centres.

That’s why some of the young offenders, at different times, ended up in hotels, Boileau said.

And when they do manage to land a bed at either of the youth detention centres in Montreal, it’s hard because they have no contact with Inuit culture.

“It’s not the same approach at all,” he said.

The goal is to build a youth detention centre in a Nunavik community, with a population of at least 1,000, to ensure enough local workers for the centre, he said.

When Salluit’s multi-million-dollar Sapummivik youth rehabilitation centre opened in 1999, it was also intended to serve as a youth detention unit.

The centre was built with four high-security beds for youth requiring 24-7 supervision and isolation.

Then, it closed down due to a lack of staff in 2008.

The centre has re-opened, but its 14 beds are now devoted to less troubled youth, because of the lack of trained staff “and the fact that the staff members were afraid of the youngsters,” said a 2006 report on the state of youth protection services in communities along Nunavik’s Ungava Bay.

That’s why girls and other boys from Nunavik who fall under the Youth Criminal Justice Act now go to Montreal or the Abitibi region.