Iqaluit woman sent to BCC on remand order

KIRSTEN MURPHY

A 19-year-old Iqaluit woman awaiting her day in court for serious but non-violent crimes spent four nights in a segregated cell at the all-male Baffin Correctional Centre (BCC) because Nunavut lacks the proper facilities to detain women.

Donna Pauloosie ate and slept in an isolated intake cell within the jail’s remand wing from April 4 to 7. It’s the first time in the prison’s 17-year history a women has been detained.

Pauloosie’s stay was without incident, corrections officials said, and after pleading guilty to a number of charges on April 8, she was placed under a 60-day house arrest.

During an April 4 show cause hearing, Justice of the Peace Bill Riddell asked that she be remanded because she had failed to appear in court on two previous occasions.

He suggested BCC as a preferable option to the RCMP cells. But the unprecedented move caused a stir within the department of corrections.

Doug Garson, the lawyer representing Nunavut’s department of justice, openly opposed sending Pauloosie to BCC.

“[An RCMP cell] would not be inhumane. We’re certainly not going to say they offer everything the Fort Smith facility does but … given the short period of time she’d be in there, it’s not inhumane or cruel,” he said.

Women over the age of 18 and awaiting court dates are dealt with in one of three ways in Nunavut. They are either flown to the Fort Smith Women’s Correctional Facility (a costly and distant option), housed in the RCMP cells (a cold and noisy environment) or are released into the public pending their next court appearance.

Adult males rarely leave the territory while awaiting their court dates. One exception was Edward Horne, who has since been convicted of numerous sex crimes against children. He was sent to the Yellowknife Correction Centre because BCC was deemed too dangerous and the RCMP cells too uncomfortable, court records say.

Youth, both boys and girls, are housed at the Young Offenders Facility on Federal Road.

During her four-day stay, Pauloosie had no contact with BCC inmates, some serving time for violent and sexual assaults. Female guards watched her 24 hours a day. Her shower and washroom facilities were segregated from the general population.

Abraham Tunraluk, Pauloosie’s legal aid representative, tried to get her a place at Iqaluit’s Akausisarvik mental health facility and the women’s shelter in Apex. He was told there was no room and it was not their mandate to take in female inmates.

Tunraluk opposed housing the teen at the busy RCMP detachment because the cells are designed for short-term detention.

Furthermore, Pauloosie, or anyone held in such conditions, may enter a guilty plea to get out to the cells and avoid prolonged time in remand, Tunraluk suggested.

“I owe a duty to my client to express concerns over the conditions which she will be detained. Were Miss Pauloosie a man, there would be no issue. Miss Pauloosie should not suffer inadequate treatment just because of her gender,” Tunraluk told the court.

Riddell has taken issue with the lack of female remand facilities for at least two years – in light of the growing number of women coming before the court.

“Having been in those cells I know it’s cold and dark and quite disruptive and to have Donna Pauloosie placed there for any length of time is inhumane,” Riddell told the court during a show cause hearing last year.

The lack of remand facilities for women is not a new problem. But as the city’s crime rate grows, so too does the number of women offenders, one justice insider observed.

“The question is what will they do next time?” he said.