Two inmates recovered from overdoses
North Slave Correctional Centre inmates took unknown opiates, says justice department spokesperson
Evan Kiyoshi French
Northern News Services
Saturday, December 5, 2015
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Staff at North Slave Correctional Centre still don't know exactly what kind of opioid drugs two of their inmates overdosed on last month, according to the spokesperson for the Department of Justice.
The North Slave Correctional Centre struggles to keep contraband outside its walls. - NNSL file photo
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Sue Glowach said guards found an inmate in distress and in need of medical aid on Nov. 12, and immediately locked down the facility while the inmate was rushed to Stanton Territorial Hospital for treatment. While staff were searching the rest of the cells, she said, they came upon another inmate suffering from the same symptoms. The second inmate was treated in the medical unit at the jail and didn't need to be transferred to the hospital. Glowach said staff are not exactly sure what the inmates ingested but said their symptoms were consistent with an opiate overdose.
"It was an opioid drug of some kind," she said, adding both of the inmates have fully recovered.
Glowach said correctional facilities across the country - including the Yellowknife jail - struggle to keep contraband out. She wouldn't explain how inmates go about smuggling drugs and other contraband in but said there are a number of methods used.
"There's a variety of different ways," she said. "We don't usually talk about them in the media; I don't want to give a how-to-get contraband-into-the-facility lesson."
She said staff have a number of strategies to keep contraband out.
"And each time something happens, we learn from that and then we apply what we know," she said. "There's as many creative ways to get contraband in as we have to get solutions to work with that."
Parker Kennedy, director of the department's corrections services division, stated in an e-mail, the incident is the first overdose at the facility in the past five years. Inmates who are caught with contraband are disciplined according to corrections regulations.
"The corrections officers are to be commended for their quick action recognizing symptoms of suspected overdoses."
Glowach said she couldn't say exactly how the inmates were disciplined, but now they are back in the population "doing the inmate thing."
"(They're) learning and getting ready for rehabilitation," she said.
