MIke Farnworth (second from right) is the B.C. NDP’s justice critic.
Nine assaults by inmates on corrections officers so far this year at Kamloops Regional Correctional Centre (in the above photo) have the B.C. NDP’s justice critic calling for increased staffing at provincial jails.
“I think it’s something the government has to pay really close attention to,” Mike Farnworth told KTW.
“You’ve got one officer looking after more and more inmates.”
Until 2002, the province’s jails had inmate-to-corrections officer ratios capped at 20:1.
Right now, there is one officer supervising each 36-inmate living unit at KRCC.
KRCC has nine living units, which are essentially large, three-walled common areas containing plastic tables and chairs.
Along another wall, there is a payphone and a small counter next to a door that leads to a games and TV room.
The longest wall is covered in two storeys of nondescript beige steel doors, each with a thin vertical window of reinforced glass looking into the common area.
At North Fraser Pre-trial Centre in Port Coquitlam, the current inmate-to-guard ratio is 60:1, according to Dean Purdy, spokesman for the corrections-officer union.
He said those ratios are creating tense — and sometimes violent — environments behind bars.
“It’s the atmosphere and how tense the environment and the mood is inside the jails,” Purdy said.
“The violence at the nine correctional centres in B.C. — and specifically KRCC — is not going away.”
Purdy said the assaults range from minor to severe.
“There are constant, ongoing altercations,” he said. “It varies widely. Anything from having feces or urine thrown on them to being punched and kicked.”
Purdy said there are only two other provinces in which the living-unit model of jail layout is in use.
In Alberta and in Ontario, he said, two officers supervise a 40-inmate living unit. At KRCC, there is one guard per 40-inmate living unit.
Farnworth said the situation in provincial jails is probably costing the government as much as improved staffing would.
“It causes increased workload and leads to greater issues around assaults,” he said, noting injuries for corrections officers are expensive for the province.
“The cost that you incur in other areas, all of those things you pay, they make up for it.”
Farnworth said it’s in the government’s best interest to increase staffing levels at provincial jails.
“I think what you do is you sit down with the union and ask them what the key issues are,” he said, noting staffing and mental-health issues among prisoners as two large concerns.
“If you had the appropriate mental-health services, that’s another way of dealing with a lot of these people,” Farnworth said.
“The bottom line is to say this is a problem and we have to deal with it.”
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