The current inmate-to-staff ratios in British Columbia’s correctional centres pose a significant threat to personnel safety, according to a study commissioned by the union representing the province’s correctional officers.
Conducted by Simon Fraser University criminologist Neil Boyd, the study says correctional officers have a significantly higher chance of experiencing on-the-job violence than other protective service workers in the province, such as police or security guards.
Some of the major factors contributing to staff stress and concern for safety include higher numbers of mentally disordered and gang-involved inmates in provincial correctional centres as well as rising inmate populations.
Boyd explains that the province’s prison facilities were designed for a 20 – 1 inmate-to-staff ratio, but that ratio has increased in recent years with prison populations rising and more cases of double bunking.
“Double bunking imposes a great deal of stress on inmates and you see inmate-on-inmate violence in a number of circumstances,” Boyd says.
“The survey of correctional officers also indicated that they were quite concerned about double bunking and the stresses it was imposing upon inmates and of course upon themselves, upon the correctional officers.”
Prisons Nationwide Overcrowded
In his annual report, the federal Correctional Investigator Howard Sapers tells of a similar concern about overcrowding in prisons across the country.
“Despite single cell occupancy being the stated policy, currently approximately 13 percent of the total inmate population is ‘double-bunked,’” Sapers says in his report, adding that this figure is projected to rise to 30 percent in the next three years.
Double bunking rates have exceeded 60 percent in some prisons. The Prairies region has the highest use of double bunking, with a rate close to 20 percent.
“Prison crowding is linked to increased levels of institutional violence and unrest and may be a contributing factor to higher incidences of disease transmission and infection rates in federal penitentiaries,” Sapers writes.
In an institution in the Prairies region, double bunking was even occurring in segregation cells, which Sapers says is “quite likely” a violation of international human rights detention standards.
More Resources Needed
Boyd says even without the federal tough-on-crime legislation sending more inmates to prisons, the current system needs to have a lot more resources put into it.
“The crime bill would just make things much, much worse,” he says.
“Government has occasionally talked about putting more money into the system, but that hasn’t happened and the influx of people into the system due to the crime bill will make an already impossible system that much worse.”
Mike Patton, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Public Safety, defends the use of double bunking.
“Double bunking is a completely normal practice, used by many Western countries,” Patton said in an email.
He says Canadians have given the Conservative government—which campaigned on tough-on-crime legislation before winning a majority in the last election—a “strong mandate” on their initiatives.
“We completely disagree with the view that dangerous criminals should be released onto our streets early just to save a buck,” Patton says.
