THURSDAY, MARCH 17, 2016
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Power Play
BUG’S LIFE
Photographer offers close up look at insects.
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MP REPORT
Greg Laychak/ The Observer
Students from Sts’ailes community school play in Pioneer Park during a power outage at their building last Thursday. Strong winds across the Lower Mainland knocked out electricity to over 115,000 customers that morning according to BC Hydro.
A conversation with local MP Jati Sidhu.
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INSIDE
New Ag Zone . . . . . . . . 4 Benet Change . . . . . . 5 Opinion . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Letters. . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Community . . . . . . . . . 8 Classieds . . . . . . . . . 14
Statistics show spike in B.C. prison violence NDP lists understaffing, overcrowding as the likely causes
Jeff Nagel
BLACK PRESS
Safety and security incidents have soared at most B.C.'s prisons over the last few years, according to newly released statistics for 2014 from B.C. Corrections. The biggest one-year increase was at Surrey Pretrial Centre, where the number of incidents tripled to more than 900 in 2014. The long-term trend has been steadily up at several other jails. Safety incidents have nearly doubled by 2014 from five years
earlier in Vancouver Island Regional Correctional Centre, North Fraser Pretrial and Kamloops Regional Correctional Centre. And Alouette Correctional Centre for Women recorded more than three times as many incidents – nearly 700 by 2014 compared to less than 200 in 2009. Fraser Regional Correctional Centre in Abbotsford had nearly 1,100 incidents in 2014 and recorded the largest numbers of any sites in B.C. in each of the six years. NDP MLA David Eby said the
statistics he requested are about a year overdue and undercut government claims prison violence was declining. "I'm incredibly concerned that we were told that violence was trending down when their own numbers show it's trending up and dramatically up," he said. Eby said a staff shortage in B.C. prisons is a probable factor. "When prisons are understaffed by guards that means things are less safe for both staff and prisoners," Eby said.
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"You don't have anybody screaming about rival gang members being put in the same place at the same time. You don't have anybody just physically present to encourage everybody to be on their best behaviour." He also cited the overcrowding of prisons from the practice of doublebunking. "When you have two or three people in a cell as opposed to a single person in a cell that leads to Continued on Page 3
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