This week, the British Columbia government’s bean-counters will be grinding through the financial impact of the federal Conservatives’ omnibus anti-crime bill. Whatever figure they come up with, B.C. won’t go to the wall to recoup the costs from Ottawa.
Premier Christy Clark is supportive of the Harper agenda on getting tough on crime – it speaks to a certain constituency her B.C. Liberal party is almost obsessively courting. Ms. Clark is trying to coax back to her tent the 18 per cent of voters who, the pollsters say, support the fledgling B.C. Conservative party.
In B.C., the politics of crime trumps the financing question.
But there is another calculation at work here: A law that would send more people to prison for longer sentences could actually take pressure off the provincial corrections system, which is responsible for housing those awaiting trial and those sentenced to less than two years in prison.
B.C.’s corrections system is currently running at 159 per cent capacity, and the “temporary” measure of housing prisoners in tents is now looking like a long-term solution.
“Double-bunking has become normal practice,” says B.C. solicitor general Shirley Bond.
Ms. Bond cringes at the word “tents” to describe the three fabric-walled Sprung structures that were erected in 2008 on the grounds of two provincial prisons. They current house 174 prisoners.
As of last week, the province’s prisons held 2,687 adults sharing 1,692 cells – including those in the tents. Half of those inmates are awaiting trial – another reason B.C. has so enthusiastically backed the move to end two-for-one credits for time served awaiting trial.
The province is spending $185-million to add more cells but the largest promised expansion, a new 360-cell prison that was supposed to open in 2015, is in limbo. Ms. Bond said no decision has been made on where, or when, it will be built.
Perhaps the solution to putting more Canadians behind bars will keep the makers of Sprung tents – sorry, “tensioned membrane structures” – busy.
