Overcrowded Baffin sends inmates to overcrowded Ottawa-Carleton

SARA MINOGUE

There are more inmates than bunks at the Baffin Correctional Centre, but the Government of Nunavut’s Department of Justice says that’s not the reason prisoners are being sent South to serve territorial sentences.

Crowded conditions at the BCC in Iqaluit mean some inmates are sleeping on mattresses on the floor instead of in beds.

As of this past Tuesday, there were 73 offenders in the jail, which is designed to hold 40 but now sleeps 66.

A news report in Ottawa last week revealed that some Nunavut offenders serving territorial sentences are being held in the Ottawa-Carleton Regional Detention Centre, where conditions were so crowded that some prisoners were forced to sleep on jail cell floors and in showers “on occasion.”

That story also revealed that the jail, commonly known as OCDC, was accepting inmates from BCC “under an agreement to help with their overflow.”

Nunavut’s deputy minister of justice, Markus Weber, denied the story.

“If we knew that there were actual people, any of our inmates, sleeping in shower cells, obviously we’d be concerned, but that’s not the case,” Weber said. “We monitor it.”

BCC has a long history of overcrowding, which grew worse this year after a fire in December destroyed two trailers used to house 12 inmates in a special program for prisoners with mental health issues.

Mattresses on the floor are a short-term solution, but one that Weber says causes minimal disruption. Most prisoners at BCC sleep in dorms built for six. Each of these dorms has two mattresses that can be pulled out from under the bunks for use at night.

Prisoners from BCC are sent to OCDC, either for their own safety, or to get access to treatment programs not available in Iqaluit, Weber said.

Seven inmates from BCC were serving time in Ottawa as of this past Tuesday.

Three of those are prisoners being held on remand while waiting for their charges to go to trial. These prisoners were sent south, Weber said, because they were charged either with sexual offences or with extremely violent crimes, and require more protection from other inmates than conditions at BCC allow.

Four other prisoners are in Ottawa serving sentences of less than two years. Prisoners normally serve these sentences within the territory, though Weber said there is no stipulation that they must do so. And in this case, they were sent South to gain access to treatment programs.

The GN has been sending prisoners to OCDC since 2002, Weber said.

To alleviate the overcrowding at BCC, prisoners are more commonly sent to the North Slave Correctional Centre in Yellowknife, where the GN has a longstanding agreement to reserve 15 beds for Nunavut offenders.

According to Weber’s numbers, the Yellowknife jail now has 137 offenders, but space for 148.

In past years, Nunavut offenders have taken up 35 to 40 beds in Yellowknife, but in the last few months, those numbers down to between 20 and 25, Weber said.

The numbers decreased when the Illavut jail, which houses 10 prisoners at a time, opened in Kugluktuk. It will soon be expanded to hold up to 16 or 20 prisoners.

Prisoners are selected to go west to gain access to treatment programs, or because they are from the Kitikmeot, and can serve time slightly closer to their home communities.

BCC remains crowded, even though more prisoners are being sent to outpost camps.

“When BCC gets full, the pressure to house people at camp increases as well, but that pressure is there anywhere because I see the camp program as being one of the better ways to correct people,” Weber said.

Sixteen offenders are now serving time at outpost camps on the land.

There are now six outpost camps in operation, including a brand new one in Gjoa Haven that recently took on its first three prisoners. Two more are to start up in Baker Lake and Kugluktuk.