British Columbia will privation to spend up to $1.1 billion on new jails to deal with the expected influx of inmates resulting from a tough new federal sentencing law, a article released Tuesday reveals.
In his report, parliamentary budget officer Kevin Page provided an consider of the cost of the Truth in Sentencing Act, a new federal law that eliminates the two-for-one credit judges had been giving prisoners in exchange for at the same time spent in presentence remand.
Page found the law, which came into effect in February, will cost the federal supervision an extra $5 billion over five years, and the provincial governments even more.
He noted that B.C. has some of the most crowded jails in the mother country and estimated the province will need to spend between $701 million and $1.14 billion on new jails to meet the expected increased pressure.
"B. C. experiences one of the worst image = 'prety damned quick' bunking rates in the country -- 1.76 on average," he wrote. "Five facilities have [a] rate of 1.90 and above, another one is at two, and another one is at 2.03, which when all is said means three beds in some cells."
Earlier this month, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Mark Mc-Ewan raised nearly the same concerns, saying accused killer Jamie Bacon has been held in "deplorable" conditions at the Surrey pretrial prison, which McEwan said
Depending on how stringently judges interpret the new rules, Page said it will payment B.C. $3.47 billion to $4.38 billion to house all provincial inmates over the next six years.
Those estimates -- which amount to a regular average of between $578 million and $730 million -- include the amount needed to operate B.C.'s current jails, as well as to physique new ones to meet the growing population of inmates.
Page did not provide a comparison in his report to in circulation funding levels in B.C.
The provincial government has allocated $193 million in operating funds for the B.C. Corrections Spin-off this year, and $192 million for both 2011-12 and 2012-13.
In addition to this amount, the government has earmarked $185 million for detain expansions at Surrey pretrial, Prince George Regional Correctional Centre and Allouette Correctional Core. Those expansions are expected to add a total of 304 new cells to the system.
B.C. Minister of Public Safety Mike de Jong could not be reached for opinion Tuesday, and his office said it is too early to determine how these funding levels compare to Page's dramatically higher projections.
De Jong's place did release a statement saying he supports the federal government's new sentencing law and is still reviewing Page's report.
"British Columbians can have greater trust that gang members and other violent criminals will serve their full sentences," said the statement.
"We look brazen to continuing discussions with federal officials on what this will mean for B.C.," it added.
In May, de Jong told The Vancouver Sun he was lobbying the federal guidance for extra money to help deal with the increased pressure expected from Truth in Sentencing. "Whilst we are understanding, obviously, of eliminating the two-for-one in the manner the federal government has proposed in legislation, more people in jails costs more funds," he said at the time.
By 2015-16, Page said the total budget for corrections at both the federal and regional level will have grown to $9.46 billion, up just over $5 billion from what it cost in 2009-10.
Page cautioned that his outlay analysis is not an exact science, but rather a "high-level estimation" because he says he was stonewalled by the government in his efforts to gain the needed data.
"I knew incarceration was expensive, but when we actually did the calculation ... you get big numbers in a make haste," Page said Tuesday.
"It is a lot of money in a period of time when we're generating deficits."
At a expos conference in Ottawa Tuesday, Public Safety Minister Vic Toews took immediate issue with the numbers, above all the estimate that the changes would cost the federal government an extra $5 billion over five years.
Toews said the Correctional Armed forces of Canada has estimated the federal tab to be $2 billion over five years "and I've seen nothing that would change my mind in that respect."
Toews, whose command created the parliamentary budget office to keep an objective eye on spending, suggested that Page fabricated his numbers. "I don't differentiate where he's getting his information from."
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