MISSING SHEARS CAUSE YEARS OF UNEASE AT PRISON.

Bosses balked at thorough cell searches

At the end of the workday at the upholstery shop inside a medium-security prison on Oct. 30, 2014, one distinctive item was missing from the tools inmates returned: a pair of cutting shears with razor-sharp metal blades that fold to a discreet, concealable size.

Uproar over those missing shears brought four years of turbulence.

Guards at Mountain Institution, a prison in Agassiz, east of Vancouver, considered the shears a lethal weapon. Unlike handmade shivs, these could kill or injure without any manipulation. Guards believed the shears were slipped into the inmate population under lax security.

The place was already tense. Two weeks earlier, one inmate lunged at another with a sharpened butter knife in an attempted murder. There were heightened threats over possible violence targeting sex offenders and potential victims arming themselves.

That month guards had confiscated six weapons, a record high number. Normally they found only nine all year.

And not far from their thoughts was a horrific attack two years before at the adjacent Kent prison, where a guard had her face and neck slashed by an inmate brandishing a handmade weapon fitted with a disposable razor blade. She still bears the scars.

The inmates who worked at the upholstery shop were interviewed, security was tightened and the shop and its grounds were searched. Staff found a triangular piece of metal hidden under a rock, a kitchen serving spoon and a TV remote control, but no shears.

The next day, guards wanted a full prison search, including inmate living units and cells, called “an exceptional search.” Missing contraband often isn’t found during such searches, but when inmates learn one is happening items disappear, typically flushed down toilets. Either way, it can solve problems.

Management balked at the disruptive process. Citing workplace safety, nearly the entire complement of prison guards on duty, 37 employees, then refused to work.

Over four years of various reviews, workplace safety tribunals and court records sparked by the missing shears provide rare insight into life behind the fences of Canada’s prisons, reveal significant security lapses and highlight the conundrum of handling a new danger for guards employed in a workplace already inherently dangerous.

“A penitentiary is a world of its own,” said the Occupational Health and Safety Tribunal, and, as such, the opinion of “the near totality of the correctional officers on duty” should not be ignored.

Even though the prison did an about-face and conducted the search, the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) pressed ahead with appeal after appeal against it, concerned “exceptional searches” not become a default response.

CSC argued there was no evidence of actual danger because of the missing shears and, if there was, it was a normal part of prison employment.

The shears are lightweight but made of metal and when the twin blades are unfolded, extend to 8.25 inches in length. Folded, they are a discreet 4.25 inches.

The tribunal described them as “a particularly frightening instrument if it is in the hands of someone who intends to use it as a weapon.” The vests worn by guards do not protect against commercially made edged weapons and do not shield the face, neck, arms or lower abdomen.

CSC classifies the shears as restricted tools “most likely to be used in an escape attempt or in any dangerous or illegal way.” As such, they should be colour-coded blue on the shop’s secure storage board but weren’t. Nor was there a system in place to identify which inmate used which tools.

Inmates at the shop could use a gate that provided them access to prison living units without being searched. They were allowed to take breaks outside the building and to use a bathroom in a building adjacent to the shop. There was no video surveillance of the upholstery area.

Behind the shop, where there are many spots to hide objects, is only periodically monitored. The shears are small enough to pass through a fence to the general prison area, or to toss overit.

CSC, however, said the shears were likely just misplaced, inadvertently thrown in the trash or, perhaps, taken for use in inmate “hobby craft.”

Several guards, as well as the warden and supervisors, testified at hearings into the workplace dispute, including the Kent guard who was slashed in the face.

At each stage, CSC’s position was rejected, most recently on Wednesday at the Federal Court in response to the government’s latest appeal.

“If the loss of a lethal object, possibly into the general prison population, does not justify taking full mitigation measures, one is left to wonder when such measures will ever be required going forward,” Judge Robert L. Barnes wrote in his decision.

More robust security measures since the incident are expected to reduce the chances of another tool mystery.

As for the upholstery shears, however, they have never been found.

“It is possible to speculate on what happened to the quick snips,” the tribunal ruled earlier, but “the answer will never be known.”

THE NEAR TOTALITY OF THE CORRECTIONAL OFFICERS ON DUTY SHOULD NOT BE IGNORED.