Nunavut inmates cause damage to prison wing

IQALUIT, NUNAVUT — Crews were cleaning up Nunavut’s notorious Baffin Correctional Centre after inmates barricaded themselves in a wing and caused considerable damage.

“Significant repairs will be required to BCC’s Charlie unit,” Nunavut Justice Minister Jeannie Ehaloak said Thursday. “The Department of Justice is looking at options to transfer and house inmates in correctional facilities outside the territory until these repairs can be completed.”

Ehaloak said there was no threat to public security.

No one was injured, she said, in what the department is calling a disturbance. Ehaloak said it began at about 11 p.m. Wednesday and lasted about 5 1/2 hours.

Corrections staff and RCMP brought the situation under control, she said. The Iqaluit fire department was also called, but didn’t go inside the jail.

Government spokesperson Catriona MacLeod said 26 prisoners were in the barricaded unit.

On Thursday, 18 inmates were being housed at Iqaluit’s courthouse and another 16 were at the sheriff’s office. One inmate was transferred to hospital “as a precautionary measure,” MacLeod said.

The rest remained at the correctional centre, but the number was not immediately clear.

Although it has improved in recent years, the prison has a troubled history.

Built for 68 minimum-security prisoners, it has averaged more than 80 and up to 115 at any one time in all security levels from remand to maximum. Six prisoners sometimes share nine square metres of cell space.

A 2015 federal auditor general’s report criticized the facility. That same year, a deputy justice minister in Nunavut warned the prison was so bad that it exposed the government to high risk of a civil lawsuit.