Sylvia Haener, left, NWT deputy minister of justice, listens as Monty Bourke, director of corrections, answers a reporter's question during a news conference at the legislative assembly on May 21. - John McFadden/NNSL photo |
Jail overtime over the top
$1.5 million paid to guards for extra shifts at North Slave Correctional Centre just one of dozens of problems at NWT jails
John McFadden
Northern News Services
Monday, May 25, 2015
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Some $1.5 million in overtime has been paid out at the North Slave Correctional Centre over a single year.
That's just one of the myriad of problems that officials from the NWT Justice Department have had to respond to over two days of hearings at the legislative assembly. Those hearings, hosted by the Standing Committee on Government Operations, were held May 20 and 21 after a damning audit on the corrections system in the NWT released in early March.
Alfred Moses, the MLA for Inuvik Boot Lake, couldn't understand why the Yellowknife-based facility needed to spend so much on overtime when it is clear to him the money would be better spent on psychologists and counsellors who could spend time with inmates trying to get to the root causes of why they are lawbreakers.
The audit showed overtime costs at the jail rose 59 per cent in just one year, from $950,000 in fiscal year 2012-13.
Eleven staff members worked between 530 and 860 overtime hours in 2013/14.
The audit noted the rise in overtime occurred despite the department receiving $1.2 million in 2010 to fund 10 new new positions to reduce overtime at the facility.
By contrast, the male unit at the Fort Smith Correction Centre showed overtime had decreased by eight per cent between 2012 and 2014.
More than half the staff worked minimal or no overtime. One front line worker, however, did see a 56 per cent increase in his earnings due to overtime.
There are 267 corrections employees in the NWT; 100 of those work at North Slave Correctional Centre (NSCC). The other jails in include the Fort Smith Correctional Complex and the South Mackenzie Correctional Centre in Hay River.
The problems uncovered by Auditor General Michael Ferguson are not unique to the NWT. Both Nunavut and the Yukon also received scathing reports on their corrections systems this past spring.
Sylvia Haener, the deputy minister of justice, was on the hot seat for two days as she was grilled by MLAs over the deficiencies that audit uncovered. The department has now put together an extensive action plan to respond to the 14 recommendations in the audit, all of which it agreed to follow. Haener insisted throughout the questioning that some of the problems that are already being addressed, including excessive overtime.
"We have been able to reduce our overtime expenditures by over $600,000 in the last year and that was through increased focus and diligence on making sure that we've got strong processes in place and that we are overseeing the use of overtime," she said.
Haener said sickness and bringing workers in to cover for others who were receiving training were two of the main reasons for the overtime tab. She does not think the absenteeism rate is due to low morale among corrections employees.
"We have a very high degree of commitment from our staff. We have staff who believe in what they are doing and come to work interested in supporting change among the inmates that are in our care."
Haener could not say how many wardens NSCC has had since it opened in 2004.
Other major problems uncovered by the audit included an inability to meet case management requirements, specifically that inmates serving sentences of less 120 days were not receiving any assessments and had very little, if any, access to rehabilitation programs.
The audit also criticized the female unit at the Fort Smith Correctional Complex which is made of wood, for being a fire hazard. The structure does not comply with the national building code, which states detention centres be built with non-combustible materials. The facility doors do not lock from the inside making it difficult for inmates to vacate the premises if there was a fire.
A new women's facility in Fort Smith is to be built by 2017. The corrections department was also called out for its use of what is known as dynamic supervision, where high-risk offenders are housed with non-violent inmates.
The audit also found that rules were not being followed when it comes to placing inmates in segregation. That includes cases where there was no justification or proper authorization for segregation, few or no daily or weekly reviews of segregation placements and almost no observation by staff of inmates in segregation. Although many of the violations pointed out by the auditor general contravene the NWT Corrections Act and go against the justice department's own rules and regulations, Ferguson stopped short of calling the mismanagement negligent.
"They're spending so much of their day focusing on the sort of day-to-day fires ... they are not standing back and saying let's make sure that we are recording why people are going into segregation. That's not a hard thing to do but sometimes it goes by the wayside," he said.
