Prisoners on strike over cuts to pay

STIPENDS: $5 a day wage rate reduced

Growing numbers of prisonersin B.C.’s federal jails have stopped working to protest deep cuts to their wages and living conditions, The Province has learned.

Last week, wage cuts took effect in federal penitentiaries across the country. Inmates are angered that their daily job stipends — which average about $5 — are being docked about 30 per cent to pay more for room and board.

Inmates in the maximum security Kent Institution told The Province that job strikes started last Thursday. A source familiar with B.C.’s federal jails said tensions are rising, and similar protests have spread to Mountain, Mission, and Matsqui institutions.

As sources informed The Province last week, protesting inmates say with recent trends in cost-cutting they can no longer afford to send money to their families, call loved ones, or buy soap and shampoo for themselves in jail, let alone save enough money for their eventual releases.

They are also angry that they are increasingly double-bunked, and have to pay as much for double occupancy as the more-desired single-bed cells. The moves are part of a tough-on-crime and deficit reduction strategy rolled out by the Conservative government.

Jean-Paul Lorieau, Pacific region spokesperson for Correctional Service of Canada, confirmed that prisoner wage-cut protests are occurring in B.C., and “sporadically” across the country. Inmates won’t receive their stipends until they return to work, he said.

But the wage cuts could be undermining chances of rehabilitation and prison guards are concerned about inmate anger leading to riots, a source said.

A prison staffer said “the threat of violence is always there. The inmates are protesting the way they’re being treated. There have been too many changes too quickly.”

Protests started in Kent’s general population, according to the source, “with the big tough guys — the murderers, bank robbers and gangsters.”

Gord Robertson, B.C.’s president of the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers, says that the wage cuts are “compounding” danger for guards in an already volatile situation. With this fall’s cost-cutting closures of Leclerc Institution in Laval, and the notorious Kingston Penitentiary in Ontario, increasing numbers of violent inmates are migrating into crowded B.C. jails.