No plans for Headingley jail upgrade just now

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This article was published 22/03/2014 (4450 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Manitoba’s largest provincial jail needs a major upgrade or total replacement to meet an expected inmate increase during the next decade.

Justice Minister Andrew Swan said Friday the Headingley Correctional Centre, built in 1930, will soon be the oldest jail in the province once the 100-year-old Dauphin Correctional Centre is replaced.

A site for the new 180-bed Dauphin jail has been chosen, but not a construction date.

“The centre block of Headingley is from another time,” Swan said. “It’s fair to say that it’s not best practice for correctional facilities. We would like to move ahead in future to upgrade and replace those facilities, but there is nothing definite at this time.”

Manitoba’s auditor general said in a report released Wednesday the province is in the early stages of reviewing what to do with the Headingley jail and the Milner Ridge facility, opened in 1952 near Lac du Bonnet. Preliminary estimates say it will cost more than $30 million to upgrade and maintain the two centres during the next 20 years.

Adding more space to meet the forecasted jail-cell crunch — about 2,000 more inmates are expected in the system by 2020, the province projects — will cost more than $600 million, the report said.

Headingley and Milner Ridge are bursting at the seams now and are regularly over their rated capacities. The rated capacity for Headingley is 549 inmates, but at times it has almost 800. The rated capacity for Milner Ridge is 460, and it sometimes has about 500.

The Opposition Progressive Conservatives say the fact the province is looking seriously at its crowded jails is an acknowledgement it isn’t doing a good job.

“If you don’t have capacity in the system, it puts pressure on everybody who’s on the back end of that system to release people into the community,” Tory justice critic Kelvin Goertzen said.

“That puts probation under pressure, the risk assessments don’t get done and people fall through cracks. It all ties in.”

The union representing the province’s 1,906 correctional officers and 180 probation officers also said the government must move swiftly to deal with high inmate counts. Manitoba had the highest adult incarceration rate in Canada in 2010-11.

Manitoba Government and General Employees’ Union president Michelle Gawronsky said plans must include speeding up construction of the new Dauphin jail and then focusing on Headingley.

“We want Dauphin built. We want it built now,” Gawronsky said.

‘The centre block of Headingley is from another time. It’s fair to say that it’s not best practice for correctional facilities. We would like to move ahead in future to upgrade and replace those facilities, but there is nothing definite at this time’

— Justice Minister Andrew Swan

“They know they’re going to have problems with Headingley. It’s an old building. What are they doing long-term to address it?”

The union said overcrowded jails pose a risk to staff and create an environment in which offenders are denied programs that would help them reintegrate into society.

Gawronsky met with Swan on Friday afternoon but said she came away with little to report to her members.

Four years ago, corrections officials addressed the forecasted shortfall of inmate beds by 2019-20 by planning a new 750-bed jail. The department requested Treasury Board for authorization, but it was not approved.

Instead, the province launched a review of jail capacity to see what else could be done, and the top recommendation was replacing the Dauphin jail.

The last jail built in Manitoba cost $82 million. Its original price tag was $25 million. The Women’s Correctional Centre in Headingley opened in 2012 to replace the women’s jail in Portage la Prairie, built in 1893. The new jail’s rated capacity is 168, but its offender count is often more than 200.

bruce.owen@freepress.mb.ca