Outnumbered guards sound alarm over jail violence
B.C.’s prison guards want the provincial government to do more to keep them safe on the job.
Staff at the Alouette Correctional Centre for Women gathered Thursday to protest working conditions that allow one guard to work alone in a living unit with 48 inmates.
“Something needs to give,” said Dean Purdy, vice-president of corrections services for the B.C. Government and Service Employees’ Union. “Something needs to change.”
Purdy said 124 provincial prison guards were assaulted on the job in B.C. in 2018, including 11 at the provincial women’s prison in Maple Ridge. Assaults on staff reached an
“all-time high” last year, but have been rising year over year for the past five years.
“On top of the assaults on our correctional officers, there’s additional violence our officers regularly witness including overdoses, suicides by hanging and slashings, assaults on other inmates with homemade weapons, jumpers (and) riots,” he said.
Containers holding urine and feces are often thrown at guards at Alouette, he added. Purdy was unable to provide a breakdown of when and where the assaults occurred before Postmedia’s deadline, but said some of the violence can be attributed to a changing jail population, with more gang-affiliated inmates behind bars.
More inmates with mental health issues are also a factor.
But Purdy also blamed the B.C. government for changing the prisoner-to-staff ratio in living units as part of a series of prison policy changes enacted almost two decades ago.
Before 2002, the ratio was capped at 20:1, so there would be one guard stationed in a living unit with 20 inmates. But without a cap, guards in Surrey Pretrial and the Okanagan Correctional Centre can see a 72:1 ratio, he said.
At Alouette, the female guards sometimes work at a 48:1 ratio.
Living units consist of a large room with several tiers of cells and a shared living space, eating space and shower space. Inmates are monitored constantly via closed-circuit TV.
“You can imagine what it would be like to be the only officer in a living unit,” said Purdy.
B.C. is the only province with direct supervision living units without a cap on the number of inmates per officer, he added.
In other provinces with a similar system, there would be two guards in a unit with 40 inmates.
The BCGEU is calling on the provincial government and WorkSafeBC to sit down with the union to address the problem.
Purdy said he’s spoken with Public Safety Minister Mike Farnworth, both when he was in opposition and since the NDP formed government.
“We know he’s aware of the problem. We want to see solutions. We can’t keep going this way.”
Postmedia asked the Ministry of Public Safety for an interview, but officials were unable to provide someone familiar with the issues before deadline. In a statement, B.C. Corrections said “absolutely nothing matters more to us than having staff go home safe at the end of their shifts.”