Nunavut prison is hell for inmates and staff alike

BCC’s overcrowded state means there’s no room to hold many programs essential for rehabilitating prisoners. Church services are held in a space that holds fewer than 12 people. (FILE PHOTO)

The Baffin Correctional Centre’s badly overcrowded state means more than mere discomfort: it means few essential programs, dangerously poor hygiene and the ever-present threat of violence.

The centre’s chronically cramped conditions make life hard not only for inmates, but also for corrections staff.

A normal shift at BCC sees six guards on duty, although when the centre is badly overcrowded, they need nine or 10 guards.

A regular shift means that, at any time, a guard might be spat upon, bitten and bled upon.

Guards take verbal abuse from the inmates, and ,if an employee is a local hire, there’s a good chance he or she will have family or friends among the prisoner population.

“It’s really hard to attract people to work here,” said BCC’s manager Kim Roth. “People have quit after their first shift.”

The challenges in hiring and retaining staff means that occasionally the prison can’t fill a regular shift, so guards from a previous shift work overtime until someone shows up.

Meanwhile, since most prisoners are on remand, that is waiting for court appearances, staff must constantly arrange transportation to and from the courthouse.

Each time prisoners go to court, there’s an opportunity for them to try to escape or smuggle contraband, such as drugs, back into the prison, Roth said.

Prisoners are strip-searched upon their return to BCC — and staff do find drugs and weapons.

But when a large group of prisoners are transported at one time, staff may miss something.

Contraband also slips into the prison when inmates receive visitors, because visitors and inmates aren’t separated by glass.

BCC was designed in the mid-1980s as a minimum-security facility, as part of the Northwest Territories corrections system.

But even with retrofitting, “BCC is not meant to hold people like it’s holding people right now,” Roth said.

The consequences of this overcrowding are numerous.

Prisoners are also generally an unhealthy group, Roth said.This means BCC’s high population is a challenge for its single staff nurse.

Hygiene is also a challenge, especially for inmates obliged to sleep in the gym, where there are no washrooms.

Inmates who need to use the washroom at night must have a guard escort them through the common area to a retrofitted facility on the other side.

This washroom consists of only three showers, three toilet stalls and a handful of sinks and urinals for the more than 30 prisoners who are housed in the gym.

BCC’s kitchen is also overcrowded. The common area where inmates eat isn’t large enough for everybody, so inmates must dine in shifts.

Another consequence of overcrowding is the loss of essential programs, because the gym houses inmates.

The inmates’ committee had purchased volleyball nets and exercise equipment with funds earned by carving sales, the prison canteen, and work crews in the city, but they can’t use them when the gym becomes a sleeping area.

Nor can Sunday church services take place in the spacious gym. Instead, Anglican and Catholic services are held in a small multi-purpose room with a capacity of less than 12 people – on a first-come, first-serve basis.

But there’s one thing that BCC inmates do get a lot of: unrestricted television. The inmates’ committee pays for a cable subscription.

When all other avenues are exhausted and the prison simply can’t squeeze in more beds, there’s no choice but to transfer inmates to corrections facilities outside Nunavut.

But every jurisdiction in Canada suffers from prison overcrowding – though not as severe as Nunavut’s – so the accepting facilities have certain rules about who they will take in.

Yellowknife’s North Slave Correctional Centre only accepts the “cream of the crop,” Roth said — inmates with prison records of good behaviour.

The other main recipient of Nunavut inmates – Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre – is more flexible, but shies away from accepting prisoners who need protective custody.

However, BCC tries to avoid transferring first-time offenders, as well as offenders with personal support systems in Iqaluit.

“We’ve had to transfer people out we really didn’t want to,” Roth said. “We try to be fair, but the restrictions placed by accepting institutions makes it difficult.”

It’s usually more desirable for the GN to keep remanded prisoners at BCC because of the cost involved in bringing them back to Nunavut for court appearances.

The Government of Nunavut’s plan to open a 46-bed correctional centre in Rankin Inlet will help reduce transfers and keep Nunavut offenders in the territory, but Roth fears it will do little to fix overcrowding at BCC.

“If it’s [the Rankin Inlet prison] built tomorrow, it’s full,” she said, so BCC’s overcrowding problems are likely to continue.

This will likely be compounded by new legislation from the federal government, which has introduced mandatory minimum sentences for some drug-related offences, and eliminated the two-for-one credit for remanded time.

The result is that prisoners will serve longer sentences, worsening BCC’s already desperate overcrowding.