Prison guards want help to deal with overcrowding
Posted August 15, 2012 7:47 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
PORT COQUITLAM (NEWS1130) – The union for corrections officers is once again saying overcrowding is a problem after an inmate was seriously beaten at North Fraser Pretrial Centre on the weekend.
Jesse Margison, who is awaiting trial in a brutal kidnapping case, was roughed up by another inmate on Sunday.
“Our major crimes section is investigating this incident and at this point, it’s too early to say whether criminal charges will be recommended,” says Cpl. Jamie Chung with Coquitlam RCMP. “I have not received an update this afternoon, but from what I’m hearing he is in pretty bad shape. The victim has pretty serious injuries and the attack was pretty serious.”
Police claim Margison is linked to gangs. His girlfriend, 22-year-old Brianna Kinnear, was shot dead in Coquitlam three years ago.
In June, a female prison guard was sucker punched in the face by an inmate at the same institution.
“It’s a jail that was built for 300 inmates and now we’re hovering around the 550 mark,” says Dean Purdy with the BC Government Employees Union. “Overcrowding is definitely playing a part and we’re seeing more violence and gang affiliated violence.”
Twenty-four officers have been assaulted this year North Fraser Pretrial Centre.
Purdy says the ratio of prisoners to guards is about sixty to one.
“We would like to see the corrections branch go to what is called a ‘rotational lock-up system’ where they let out half of the inmates at a time so we can better manage the population,” Purdy says. “It will make it easier for the officers and the inmates as well.”
As guards are dealing with violence there, a man with a history of gun and drug convictions is being shipped to a more heavy duty institution in the Fraser Valley.
Corrections officers seized some heroin, tobacco and marijuana at Matsqui Institution. They believe Omar Hassan Omar was trying to bring the drugs into the prison so that he could sell them to other inmates.
The Warden ordered Omar be transferred to Kent Institution, which is maximum security.
Omar took the matter to the BC Supreme Court, where the transfer was supported by Justice Gregory Fitch.
“The Applicant is currently serving sentences for drug trafficking and violence involving the use of firearms,” Fitch says in his ruling.
“It was open to the Warden to conclude, as he did in this case, that the Applicant’s institutional behaviour displays consistency with his behaviour while in the community. It was open to the Warden to conclude, given the Applicant’s criminal antecedents and his implication in the institutional drug subculture, that his risk was elevated and that he could not be managed within a medium security setting.”
Omar is serving a ten year sentence. He was found guilty of shooting a man in the leg after he wasn’t allowed into a nightclub in downtown Vancouver. The offence happened while he was on bail for the drug charge.
