Correcting the corrections system

There are many in Nunavik who will welcome the recent announcement that the province of Quebec will build a 40-bed correctional centre somewhere in Nunavik, a measure that will help meet a long-ignored provision of the James Bay land claims agreement. (Nunatsiaq News, Sept. 13, 2002)

There’s no doubt that Nunavik needs this new building. A report issued last January by Nunavik’s joint working group on sentence management found that in the year 2000, 938 criminal files were opened in that region. Nearly half of those – 418 – originated in Kuujjuaq, whose crime rate appears to have tripled since 1989.

Each one of those “files” represents one person charged with one or more criminal offences. So even if you assume that at least some of those people will be found not guilty, or have their charges stayed, it’s fair to conclude that rapidly escalating numbers of people in the Nunavik region will continue to be convicted of criminal offences.

Of those, at least some, especially those convicted of serious crimes of violence, will need to serve prison sentences. And, of course, growing numbers of people who must be held in custody until the courts deal with their cases will also need a place to serve their remand time.

So even if Nunavik’s new jail turns out to be big enough to meet the region’s current needs, it’s likely that it will soon become obsolete. Nunavik’s burgeoning crime rate likely means that within a decade, its correctional centre will be too small, and that many offenders sentenced to non-federal time will continue to do their time in prisons far from home.

So it looks as if Nunavik is about to embark upon the same error-ridden course that territorial officials embarked upon in 1984, when they built the Baffin Correctional Centre in Iqaluit.

Originally designed to hold 42 male and female offenders, BCC has been grossly inadequate for years. By 1990, after a series of embarrassing sex scandals, territorial officials abandoned the idea of housing men and women within the walls of the same correctional institution, and BCC became a male-only correctional centre. Since then, no new correctional centres have been built in Nunavut – including a badly needed correctional centre for women. Even now, women requiring detention must be sent to a facility in Fort Smith.

Between 1992 and 1998, when most of the planning work for Nunavut was done by the Nunavut Implementation Commission and the Office of the Interim Commissioner, no one looked seriously at the idea of building more prisons in Nunavut. Because of this omission, Nunavut now lacks an essential piece of social infrastructure – and Nunavut’s many inmates, their families, and the public are now paying the price.

The lack of correctional centre space in Nunavut is causing many unnecessary hardships for inmates, especially women, and is even threatening to bring the administration of justice into disrepute. Last May, Bill Riddell, an Iqaluit justice of the peace, released a 24-year-old woman charged with assault and theft, even though the Crown presented evidence that justified detaining her until trial.

“The thing that has come up with her, as with almost every other female that comes before me for a bail hearing, is that I’m stuck because Nunavut does not have a proper remand facility for women,” Riddell said in court.

Nunavut also needs a remand centre for men ordered by the courts to stay in custody until the courts have dealt with their charges, because the large numbers of remand prisoners in BCC has contributed greatly to overcrowding there. Because remand prisoners have yet to be convicted of the charges against them and are presumed to be not guilty, they don’t have access to programs available to convicted inmates serving actual sentences.

This is a serious issue, because remand prisoners tend to be those accused of the most serious crimes of violence, such as homicide and aggravated sexual assault, and often need more help than other types of offenders. But it’s these remand prisoners who spend many frustrating months in jail with little to do during their time inside.

As for convicted territorial offenders, large numbers are still being sent to the Northwest Territories to serve their time at the Yellowknife and Hay River correctional centres. All federal offenders – generally those who receive sentences greater than two years – must serve their time in southern penitentiaries, most of them at the Fenbrooke institution in central Ontario.

It’s true that Nunavut’s system of correctional camps, coupled with the introduction of community-based approaches to corrections, have taken some of the pressure off of BCC.

But Nunavut’s crime rate is so high, especially the rate of violent crime, that even if Nunavut uses as little incarceration as possible, it will still end up with a lot of people in jail. If the status quo is maintained, large numbers of Nunavummiut will be forced to spend their time thousands of mile away from their families and communities.

Even though this issue has been thoroughly studied and publicized, Nunavut’s political leaders seem hardly aware of it, perhaps because they’re afraid of it. An election candidate who says “I promise to build more prisons” in their platform is unlikely to win many votes in northern Canada.

But adequately funded correctional centres, staffed by properly trained people offering programs aimed at helping inmates deal with the issues that caused them to commit their offences, are essential public services that Nunavut residents deserve as much as other Canadians.

Given Nunavut’s high rates of violent crime, this need is as great as our need for better health facilities and better schools. Our prison inmates may have done terrible things to earn their sentences, and they must be held accountable for their actions. We should not forget, however, that they are still human beings who need compassionate help.
But all the signs indicate that in the future, Nunavut leaders will continue to ignore their needs as efficiently as they’ve ignored them in the past.

JB