Iqaluit woman released from “worst jail cell in the country”

As Nunatsiaq News went to press this week, Nunavut corrections officials released an Iqaluit woman from the grim confines of Iqaluit’s notorious RCMP lock-up, in the face of a court action from her lawyer and the threat of embarrassing headlines highlighting the non-existence of proper services for female prisoners in Nunavut.

Noodloo Shiutiapik, 24, gained early release late Tuesday afternoon, escaping the prospect of having to serve the remainder of a 30-day jail sentence inside what her lawyer calls “one of the worst jail cells in the country.”

At the same time as most Nunavummiut fished, boated, waved a maple leaf flag or just sunned themselves this past Canada Day weekend, the woman sat inside the RCMP lock-up. Her lawyer, Pat Cashman, and the woman’s father were unable to visit her for three days over the holiday weekend.

Nunavut corrections officials dumped her there at the start of the holiday weekend, just after 5 p.m. on Friday, June 30, to serve the last three weeks of a 30-day prison sentence that’s supposed to be served in a correctional centre.

Shiutiapik received her 30-day sentence, for common assault, on June 23, after pleading guilty before Justice of the Peace Maureen Doherty. Cashman said it was a case of “an abused woman striking back.”

Markus Weber, the deputy minister of justice, confirmed in an interview this Monday that corrections workers moved Shiutiapik there from a halfway house near downtown Iqaluit that’s part of the Baffin Correctional Centre.

But he refused to say why. “It’s for a specific reason I can’t tell you about,” Weber said.

Weber told Nunatsiaq News on Monday that the justice department had no plans to give the woman early release. But on Tuesday afternoon, after he was interviewed by the paper, the woman was released into the custody of her father, with conditions.

Iqaluit’s RCMP lock-up is regarded as the worst place in Nunavut to do time. It’s so bad defence lawyers have argued in the past that to keep a prisoner there for more than a few days amounts to cruel and unusual punishment, in violation of the Charter of Rights.

When judges, at sentencing hearings, try to calculate how much credit to give convicted persons for time spent in those cells, they usually double or triple it.

By that form of reckoning, the court system would deem a 30-day stint at the lock-up to be worth a 60- or 90-day stint at a correctional centre.

That’s because the RCMP cell area is not designed to serve as a correctional facility. It’s for the temporary detention of prisoners awaiting transport to other places, and for use as a drunk tank.

There’s no shower, no kitchen for preparing food, no access to an outdoor exercise yard, no common areas, no programs, uncertain visiting hours, and no correctional staff. The cells are equipped with a sleeping bench and a toilet that offers no privacy.

Nunavut women sentenced to jail time or detained in remand while awaiting trial are usually sent to a women’s correctional centre at Fort Smith, in the Northwest Territories, or to facilities in Ontario.

Cashman said the GN created the impression that they treated the woman this way to save money, whether it be the expense of flying her to and from Fort Smith, or the expense of hiring enough staff to keep her at the BCC half-way house.

He also said an RCMP officer told him the GN changed its policy on the incarceration of women just before moving the woman into the Iqaluit lock-up.

But Markus Weber said the GN has not changed its policy. He said the GN’s policy is to send women prisoners to correctional centres like the one at Fort Smith, or to a remand centre in Ottawa.

The absence of detention facilities for women has been a source of controversy in Nunavut long before division in 1999.

In 1998, the 10-member Nunavut Corrections Planning Committee recommended that Nunavut develop a six- to eight-bed minimum security correctional facility for women, modelled on the Fort Smith centre.

That committee also recommended that Nunavut and the federal government design and build a new 230-bed correctional centre to house all adult male inmates – whether they’re serving territorial or federal time.

If such a centre were created, the committee suggested, then the old BCC buildings could be used for other purposes, such as a women’s facility, or a men’s remand centre.

The GN appeared to adopt much of that plan in 1999, when Jack Anawak was still justice minister. But now, it’s not clear what the GN plans to do.

However, Paul Okalik, the GN’s current justice minister, met this past May with Stockwell Day, the federal minister of public security, to talk about getting money to pay for a new correctional facility in Nunavut.

A source told Nunatsiaq News recently that the GN wants to build this correctional centre in Rankin Inlet.

That contradicts advice provided by the corrections planning committee, which recommended a centre be built in a community with a big hospital and a big police detachment – which means Iqaluit.

The GN, however, found money to develop a small jail in Kugluktuk, and the new $16 million justice building in Iqaluit, known to local wags as the “justice palace.”