Articles & News

January 3, 2008

No vacancy - Labrador Correctional Centre filled to capacity; overcrowding will likely get worse: Marshall

JAMES MCLEOD, The Telegram

If you commit a crime in Labrador and you're sentenced to jail time, there's a good chance you will have to wait between one and two months to get into prison, according to a major review of the prison system released in December.

While the 150-year-old Her Majesty's Penitentiary (HMP) in St. John's is easily the most troubled facility in the province, the Labrador Correctional Centre (LCC) comes a close second.

Built in 1984 to house 38 inmates, it currently holds 53 -the maximum the fire marshall will allow.

An additional five inmates are at the RCMP lockup in Happy Valley-Goose Bay waiting for beds in the prison.

Moreover, when it was built, there were 21 corrections officers running the LCC; now, despite housing 15 more inmates, it has four fewer officers supervising them.

The issue of inmates overflowing into the RCMP lockup can cause problems for the police, according to RCMP spokes- man Sgt. Wayne Newell.

"It's certainly another duty that we have to do, and Happy Valley-Goose Bay is an extremely busy area," Newell said. "For a person to take a shower, it requires that person to be taken out of the cells under guard, of course, and it usually involves tying up an RCMP officer to assist. ... It's tying up resources, there's no question."

Justice Minister Tom Marshall said the provincial government is looking at ways to increase capacity - trying to reconfigure the prison to handle more than 53 inmates, transporting prisoners to facilities on the island and, in the long term, building a new wing at LCC.

Situation will likely get worse

Marshall said because of the demographics of Labrador, the overcrowding problems will only get worse.

"Unfortunately, members of the aboriginal community are over-represented in the justice system - in corrections - and the aboriginal population is growing and as a result of that we do have capacity issues at the LCC," he said.

"Over-represented" may be an understatement. According to the prison review, 94-98 per cent of the LCC prisoners are either Innu, Inuit or Metis. Across the province, aboriginals make up three per cent of the provincial population, but 20 per cent of the prison population.

These numbers put Newfoundland and Labrador in line with the rest of Canada and there's no easy fix.

According to Les Samuelson, a visiting professor at MUN who has done extensive research on aboriginal justice issues, any plan to tackle crime rates among natives would likely have to last 20 years or more.

"This has sometimes been called trans-generational trauma," he said. "It's difficult to leave behind a whole host of experiences and conditions and memories and learned negative behaviours."

Samuelson said the best way to reduce incarceration among natives would be to work with the communities and accept that any progress will happen very slowly.

The province is already doing some of this. The prison runs sacred purification ceremonies based on aboriginal cultures, and employs both Innu and Inuit liaison officers.

One of the reasons the Justice Department is reticent to transfer prisoners to facilities on the island is that programming with a focus on native issues doesn't exist at other facilities.

So ultimately, Marshall said, they will need to build a new wing for the LCC.

However, that may take a long time; the province's top priority has always been replacing HMP, and Marshall is also eyeing replacing the Correctional Centre for Women in Clarenville.

And Labrador doesn't have adequate facilities to handle women, youth and people with mental health issues. There's a concept on the table to build a 12-unit facility that would house four of each on remand while awaiting trial in Labrador. That facility would likely take precedence over a new wing for the LCC as well.

The best Marshall will say at this point is that thanks to the review, the province is aware of the problems, and know what needs to be done.

"I can't tell you what we're going to do, but I can tell you it's a priority for the department, and we're working on it," he said.

jmcleod@thetelegram.com