Overcrowded Nunavut jail reaches the boiling point

The Baffin Correctional Centre, built in the mid-1980s to house only 48 inmates, held 102 prisoners during the week of April 18, adding to the administrative nightmare that staff must normally cope with at the grossly overcrowded facility. (FILE PHOTO)

During the third week of April, the Baffin Correctional Centre, Nunavut’s largest territorial jail, was more crowded than at any other time in its history.

Its inmate population stood at 102, stuffed into a building designed to hold less than two-thirds that number, and originally built to house only 48 people.

“The entire population is stuck inside with no way to be active and that causes issues,” said BCC’s manager, Kim Roth.

As the only real prison in Nunavut — as opposed to halfway houses, land camps or “correctional healing centres” — BCC has developed a muddled system of stop-gap measures to minimize the risk of violence.

For staff, much of their workload goes towards ensuring that inmates with grudges against each other – such as an inmate with a drug debt owed to another inmate – aren’t assigned to the same cell.

“It’s a daily thing to try and keep the peace in here,” said Roth. “It’s a nightmare for administrative staff and floor staff.”

Most BCC inmates are on remand, meaning they’re held in custody while waiting for Nunavut’s crowded court system to deal with their cases, Roth said.

And remand prisoners are generally considered more dangerous than sentenced prisoners, who usually serve periods of less than two years at territorial facilities.

The overcrowding, due to the large number of remand prisoners, is so bad the Nunavut Court of Justice will hold a special week of court starting May 10, just to get through the huge backlog of remand prisoners.

Each of BCC’s 12 cells was originally intended to hold four bunks, putting its original capacity stood at only 48.

Since then, a third bunk bed has been added to each cell, increasing the official capacity to 72.

When the jail population exceeds that number, staff lay mattresses on the floor of each cell to house one more inmate.

This means that cells originally designed to hold four inmates may now hold up to seven. The BCC gym also holds about 30 cots.

Offenders sentenced to periods greater than two years usually serve their time at federal prisons in the South.

As a result, most of BCC’s sentenced prisoners are people serving short sentences for fairly minor offences.

However, remand prisoners who may have lengthy criminal records for crimes of violence must remain at BCC to be close to courts in Nunavut. This is because they’re often required to make frequent court appearances while awaiting trial.

And because of the overcrowding, BCC can’t keep sentenced prisoners separated from the more dangerous remand prisoners.

What this all adds up to is that, on average, three-quarters of BCC’s inmate population are on remand.

They can’t go anywhere else because while on remand, these prisoners aren’t eligible for halfway houses or land camp programs.

They also aren’t allowed to join scheduled outings at the city’s pool or arena, or outings with work crews.

Of course, mixing with sentenced prisoners gives certain advantages for remand prisoners: they get privileges such as psychological treatment, telephone access and visitors in the common area.

Otherwise, remand prisoners would receive visitors in a secure area, separated by glass and talking over telephone handsets, unable to physically touch family members.

When BCC was designed, only three of the building’s holding cells were intended for remand prisoners and these were located in a more secure area.

BCC now uses those secure cells for other purposes.

One cell is for BCC’s small number of female inmates — although female inmates are said to be difficult for BCC to accommodate because their presence means there must always be a female staff member on duty.

Another cell is for inmates with special needs, including mental health issues, and for protective custody.

BCC uses six other rooms for protective custody, including two isolation cells with no furniture, mostly for inmates who are considered at risk of suicide.

Due to the chronic overcrowding, in December 2009, regular MLAs sitting in the Legislative Assembly, led by Iqaluit West MLA Paul Okalik, rejected a $300,000 feasibility study to look at upgrading or perhaps replacing the 26-year-old BCC.

Some regular MLAs cited overcrowded homes and schools in Nunavut as a higher priority to address than the overcrowded prison.

Others argued that it would be better to put money into healing, land-camp and counseling programs to reduce the crime rate and eventually reduce prison overcrowding that way.

“So those measures are underway. As my colleague for Nanulik explained, we would like to see these projects completed first before we study any more jails. There are far more pressing issues, in my opinion, to address,” Okalik said at the time.