Iqaluit (Oct 30/06) - Internal government documents obtained by Nunavut News/North detail the scramble to make changes at the Ilavut correctional centre after Kugluktuk politicians criticized the Department of Justice's handling of an earlier escape at the institution.

On the night of August 7, inmate Eric Kaiyogana slipped out the back door of the healing facility. Serving a sentence for theft over $5,000, Kaiyogana had piled clothing under his bedsheets in the shape of a person so his absence wouldn't be noticed.

At 8:03 a.m., case worker Glen Ekhiohina got a phone call from a woman who said Kaiyogana was passed out on her porch. Ekhiohina checked Kaiyogana's cell.

"When this writer first looked in the room there appeared to be someone asleep in Kaiyogana's bed," Ekhiohina wrote in an incident report filed the same day. "This writer pulled the blanket back only to find that Kaiyogana had made a dummy out of clothing and had covered up with a blanket."

Ekhiohina was supposed to check the sleeping figure to ensure it was a person but he didn't, the documents show.

By 9:54 a.m., RCMP Cpl. Denise Keatley picked up Kaiyogana and returned him to custody.

He was later transferred to the secure North Slave Correctional Facility in Yellowknife.

Soon after the incident, Koovian Flanagan, the justice department's assistant deputy minister, told News/North that Ilavut inmates were there on the understanding that bad behaviour would get them sent back to a secure facility and that the incident was "not an escape."

"I don't know if you even really have a story," Flanagan said.

E-mails between department officials show they thought otherwise. Justice staff spent much of the next week writing and rewriting a briefing note for Justice Minister Paul Okalik to use in his comments to the media.

In an Aug. 8 e-mail to Flanagan, deputy justice minister Markus Weber wrote: "This one will require a response that can be seen... you will need to prepare for the media even if nothing happened during the inmates (sic) absence from the centre."

The Kugluktuk Ilavut Centre is a minimum security institution that stresses treatment and reintegration. Inmates often come and go to programs in the community and out on the land. They are also free to step out for cigarette breaks, but they are still in custody of the state.

While at the centre, Kaiyogana was participating in a number of healing programs, including drug and alcohol treatment and counselling on Inuit traditions and lifestyles. He had recently suffered the loss of a grandmother, but also had a dinner visit with an elder three nights before he fled.

His escape was the second from Kugluktuk Ilavut Centre in four months. In April, an unnamed inmate serving time for sex offences bolted from the centre's front porch. That incident prompted calls from Kugluktuk Mayor Derrick Power to change the screening process and stop accepting violent offenders.

Ekhiohina and another staffer on duty that night were later summoned by case worker supervisor Richard Plamondon to take part in a "fact-finding meeting" to review the escape. The pair put it off because union representatives were unable to attend the original date. The meeting was rescheduled, but it's unclear if it ever took place.

In an interview, Pauloosie Nuyalia, assistant director of corrections, said the two workers weren't formally disciplined, but did take part in "a refresher course" for procedures at the centre.

"(Now) when we're doing counts what we look for is breathing, the rise and fall of the chest," Nuyalia said.

Those were some of the changes made at the correctional centre in the aftermath of Kaiyogana's escape. In keeping with the centre's mandate, it hasn't been locked down and maintains its relative freedom.

In the wake of the two escapes, the Kugluktuk Ilavut Centre no longer accepts convicts straight from court as many of them are in "detox mode" and therefore "more difficult to manage," Nuyalia said.

The facility's criteria specify that inmates' records should consist mainly of property offenses and no "severe crimes against persons," (murder, for example) said deputy justice minister Markus Weber. Pedophiles and repeat sexual offenders aren't eligible to serve their sentences there.

Centre staff now travel to higher-security prisons in the Northwest Territories to interview Nunavummiut inmates to see if they are ready for the half-way house environment at Ilavut, Nuyalia said.

"This is one of their steps on their way home."