Improved security can’t come soon enough for Burnside Jail: union
Posted Sep 14, 2010 05:39:31 AM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
After weeks of violence at the Burnside jail, the justice minister has announced that it’s not acceptable – and he’s making changes to put an end to it.
Ross Landry announced Monday that new equipment, more staff and policy reviews would be implemented to curb recent incidents of inmates attacking guards and each other – but labour leaders and opposition members say there are other issues at play that need to be addressed.
Tory justice critic Cecil Clarke says his party welcomes any changes that improve safety for workers and inmates at the jail, but says the government could have handled things differently.
“The government is paying a price for not following through on commitments they said they would, such as the Springhill correctional facility as well as Antigonish,” he said. “They would have been under construction and allowed for diversification and a quarantining of populations across the province.”
Clarke called the changes at the jail a “political knee-jerk” by the minister, noting just last week Landry called an assault on a female guard “business as usual.”
Jail guard union head Joan Jessome agrees that there is a problem with the type of prisoner being held in the province’s largest jail.
“Well over 70 per cent of the people that are there are on remand, they’re not sentenced inmates, they’re remand,” she said. “They’re in open custody, in a sense, in the facility. Those same type or same level of inmate in the federal penitentiary are in locked-down units.”
Jessome says there were seven assaults over 11 days in recent months, and notes part of the problem is staffing levels – and not just at the jail.
“We don’t have enough judges, we can’t get into the courtroom,” she said. “Some of these people in here should be in federal penitentiaries. They’re not – because they can’t get through the court system. So it’s not just the Burnside facility.”
Jessome notes that at the Burnside jail, there are just five full-time guards watching over 100 inmates. She says changes to increase security can’t come soon enough for a facility that is “in crisis.”
