Inmates moved to Ontario prison after BCC fire
30 sent to Kingston-area institution; another 30 sent to various Nunavut facilities
Incident reports written by staff following a March 18 fire at Iqaluit’s Baffin Correctional Centre paint a picture of what was going on in the facility just before the first broke out. (Photo by David Venn)
Thirty inmates displaced by last week’s fire at Baffin Correctional Centre have been sent to Joyceville Institution, a medium-security federal prison outside Kingston, Ont., Nunavut’s Department of Justice announced Monday.
Another 30 inmates from BCC, meanwhile, have been transferred to facilities across the territory, states a news release.
Prior to these transfers, the inmates were temporarily held at accommodations in Iqaluit provided by the RCMP detachment, the Nunavut Court of Justice sheriffs and by other correctional facilities within Iqaluit, the Justice Department said.
On March 18, emergency crews received a call about a fire at the Iqaluit jail around 3 p.m. as smoke billowed from the building just north of the city’s airport. The RCMP is investigating the fire as an arson.
The fire was minor and caused by a small piece of burning plastic, said Lisa Milosavljevic, the City of Iqaluit’s communications manager, in an emailed statement.
There were no injuries, to which Hickes credited the quick action of BCC staff and first responders.
It remains unclear where in BCC the fire happened or how much damage was caused.
Hickes said that “maintenance crews are assessing the damage to the facility and creating remediation plans to determine a timeline for reopening the BCC.”
Chartering 60 criminals and 60 guards or more wasn’t cheap. Should be forced labor on the perp for the hundreds of thousands of dollars I imagine this transport cost.
Now lets see the true cost of this endeavour? A chartered aircraft to bring a bunch of prisoners to Ontario. They could have just left them a few hundred miles away from Iqaluit in a camp with security instead.
How would they have gotten them a couple hundred miles away from Iqaluit in a camp with security instead without also chartering an aircraft? On snowmobiles? That sounds nice and secure, doesn’t it? What a stupid comment. I’m sure they’re just as thrilled as you that someone else started a fire so now they have to be flown thousands of miles away from anyone they know, housed in an Ontario jail that probably offers no programming and contains actual white supremacist gang members, and have no idea when they’ll be back in court. But hey, they got to ride on a big plane, didn’t they.
It depends if they were involved with the fire or not. Some of those real bad bastard are going to get checked down south. Maybe it’ll help them. If that’s the case the money is worth it. Full believer in rehabilitation