Overcrowding causing jail guard assaults: critics

A second assault on a B.C. jail guard by a prisoner in the past two weeks has prompted calls for old jails to be reopened to help ease overcrowding.

A guard suffered head injuries on Saturday after an inmate attacked him while being checked into the Wilkinson Road Jail near Victoria. The guard was treated for a head wound at the jail and did not require hospitalization.

On March 16, another guard at the same jail suffered a broken ankle in an assault.

'Times are getting desperate and our staff are wearing the brunt of it.' — B.C. jail guard spokesman Dean Purdy

Understaffing, overcrowding and an increase in mentally ill inmates are to blame for the spike in violence, according to Dean Purdy, a spokesman for the B.C. Government Employees Union.

Purdy said B.C. jails are operating at 180 per cent of capacity and the only relief in sight is a new facility under construction in Surrey, but it won't be ready until 2013.

Nine jails closed

The province should open more cells now, Purdy said.

"They closed nine jails in 2003, and we would like to look at any of them [reopening]" he said. "Times are getting desperate and our staff are wearing the brunt of it."

The B.C. NDP also suggests government cutbacks were partly to blame for the violence.

"They need to recognize that closing some of the corrections facilities, which they did do in 2001, has contributed to this problem," MLA Mike Farnworth said Monday.

"This government has not been providing the resources or staffing levels to ensure we have enough people in our corrections facilities," he said.

B.C. Solicitor General Kash Heed acknowledged Monday that overcrowding is a problem, but said his ministry has already reopened some cells.

"We'll continue to look at capacity and move people around as we see fit," Heed said. "I think we are responding in a very responsible, accountable and assertive effort."

Heed said the prison population is monitored daily and more spaces might be opened in the short term.