Inmate’s death sparks change in policy
The Saskatoon Correctional Centre has changed the way it monitors inmates with medical problems since the 2016 death of Gerald Burnouf.
Now, inmates with health issues being held in special cells are under constant video surveillance, and staff must go every hour to each cell to ensure the man inside is breathing, Jock McDowell, the deputy director at the jail, told a coroner’s inquest on Tuesday.
On Oct. 8, 2016, Burnouf, 49, who appeared to be withdrawing from methamphetamine, was under medical observation, but was in a holding cell, normally used to separate disruptive inmates from general population, because the two medical cells near the nursing station were full.
A correctional officer, Kaila Anderson, was assigned to a desk outside Burnouf ’s cell to check on him every 15 minutes.
Anderson testified that between 3 p.m. and 4 p.m. Burnouf was agitated and wanted methadone but he wasn’t allowed to have it. He yelled and threw away the Tylenol the nurse gave him, she said.
After 4 p.m., Anderson said she saw him lying on his bunk and he appeared to be sleeping. Shortly before 6 p.m., another correctional officer couldn’t wake Burnouf when he called him for his shower. The officers called for the nurses and went into the cell, where they found Burnouf not breathing and unresponsive.
Staff did CPR and called 911, but
Burnouf died at the scene.
The need to ensure sleeping inmates are breathing was reinforced with the policy and through emails to staff, McDowell said.
The doctor in charge of the jail’s methadone program won’t start new patients on the drug, which is used to help addicts wean off hard drugs, because it’s difficult to provide the required assessment for the program in the institution and because of the risk the potentially deadly drug will be trafficked to other inmates, McDowell said.
Burnouf, who was also known as Gerald Laliberte, had been in and out of hospital, police and jail custody in the days before his death.
He wasn’t well, appeared to be withdrawing from drug use the day before his death, and repeatedly asked for methadone that day, the inquest heard.
Saskatoon police Sgt. Doug McNeil said Burnouf sought psychiatric help at Royal University Hospital on Oct. 4, but caused a disturbance. Police were called and they took him into custody “for his own safety,” McNeil said.