Young offenders detained in hotel

MNA says situation points to need for aboriginal youth centres closer to home

Three young offenders from aboriginal communities in northern Quebec were housed in a Dorval hotel for days while authorities struggled to find room for them in Montreal-area detention centres. Katherine Wilton reports their case highlights the growing need for closed facilities in northern communities.

Three aboriginal young offenders were detained in a Dorval hotel for a few days recently while a youth protection official from northern Quebec scrambled to find them a bed in a youth detention centre in Montreal.

Housing young offenders in a hotel, instead of a youth centre where they can get help, is dangerous and unacceptable, said Liberal MNA Robert Poeti, who raised the issue Tuesday in the National Assembly.

The three youths have all been charged with violent crimes, he said. They were not held in a hotel room at the same time, but on three separate occasions for a few days each.

Given the lack of a youth centre close to their community, the youths had to be flown to Val-d’Or and then to Montreal. “It required a guard 24 hours a day and they had to order food from restaurants,” said Poeti, the Liberal spokesman on public security issues.

The Association des centres jeunesse du Québec has been sounding the alarm for years about the need for better youth protection services in northern Quebec.

Many aboriginal youths, who are charged with crimes or are placed in custody by youth protection so they can’t harm themselves, have to be taken to Montreal to serve their sentences or receive treatment.

Mario Lapointe, director of the Centre de santé Tulattavik in Kuujjuaq, said housing the three youths in a hotel was an exceptional circumstance, but one that highlights the importance of being able to keep young aboriginals in their communities.

At present, there are seven to 10 aboriginal young offenders in youth detention centres in Montreal and Quebec City.

Lapointe said he is committed to “repatriating” aboriginal offenders so they can be rehabilitated in their own communities.

“We need to keep them nearer their reality and their families,” he said. “When they go away, they are all alone and there is no one who speaks their language.”

To fulfill his goal, Lapointe will have to persuade the Quebec government to build a youth detention centre and provide a budget for staff to work with the youths, many of whom have convictions for serious crimes.

Lapointe said he is looking at various options that he will submit to Véronique Hivon, the Quebec minister in charge of youth protection.

The revelations about young offenders being detained in a Dorval hotel became public Tuesday after Poeti was informed of the situation. Two weeks ago, Hivon visited Inuit communities in northern Quebec to discuss social services and youth protection issues with local officials.

Hivon visited a group home for aboriginal youths age 6 to 12 in Kuujjuaq and a youth centre in Puvirnituq, which she said would give her a better understanding of their reality.

Claire Roy, a spokeswoman for Batshaw Youth and Family Centres, the agency that often takes charge of aboriginal young offenders once they arrive in Montreal, said that all of Quebec’s youth centres work together to try to find a bed for youths in need.

If one agency doesn’t have a bed, the youth protection agency responsible for the young offender is responsible for making other arrangements until a bed becomes available.

In the cases that Poeti made public, a youth worker found himself in Montreal with a young offender and there was no bed available.

“That was the decision he made,” Lapointe said of checking the young offenders into a hotel.

kwilton@montrelgazette.com