DEATH AT MAPLE RIDGE MEN'S PRISON

A man just out of his teens died in his cell at Fraser Regional
Correctional Centre Friday morning.

Kyle Wigham, 20, was found dead in his cell around 8:45 a.m.

But the public won't know for several weeks, exactly how or why he
died.

B.C. Corrections spokesman Lisa Lapointe said she could only confirm
an inmate was found dead in his cell.

His name was released Monday by the B.C. Coroner's Service. An autopsy
takes place today.

As for reports the man died of a drug overdose, "I don't know. That's
probably speculation," Lapointe said Monday.

Inmates have access to telephones and that's how speculation about the
cause of death developed, she said.

RCMP confirmed the man was 20 years old and that it wasn't a
suspicious death, but wouldn't say where he was from or how he died.

The death, though, is just another sign of a stressed out prison
system, said Dean Purdy, chair of corrections and sheriff services for
the B.C. Government Employees Union.

"From our standpoint, here we're concerned because it's another death.
Drugs within that correctional centre are very prevalent."

Purdy said packages of marijuana, cocaine, crack cocaine or heroine
are bundled up, sometimes into tennis balls, and tossed over the wire
fence at Fraser Regional, where they're picked up by outside inmate
work crews.

"Anything you can think of - and we're catching a lot of it," he
said.

He says dope stashes are even left on work sites off the prison
grounds around Maple Ridge where inmates do park maintenance work.

"You can't stop it - there's just no way you can do it. I think Fraser
Regional is probably the worst, because of what programs they offer,
if not the worst," of the nine correctional centres around B.C., he
said.

He said just last week, staff where he works at the Vancouver Island
Regional Correctional Centre intercepted a package smokes, marijuana
and batteries that a woman was about to toss over the fence.

Purdy said with staff shortages, that the union is continually
pointing out are due to lower pay than other peace officer positions,
it means fewer drug searches. "What our staff are exposed to is very
dangerous."

As chair of the BCGEU corrections committee, he speaks often with
staff at the men's prison in Maple Ridge, which he notes has had two
riots in the past six months, for which he blames overcrowding at the
prison.

Lapointe said Corrections knows drugs get into the prisons and staff
know they're being tossed into the yard. "Whether or not drug use is
rampant is really something they're speculating about."

It would be difficult comparing drug searches from one period to the
next because they don't follow a schedule and often they're done
randomly or based on tips.

It wouldn't make sense for an off-site inmate work crew to start
importing drugs inside the walls. Any inmate found doing that would be
suspended from the program and if staff thought that was happening,
the inmates wouldn't be going out, she added.

Usually, four 12-man crews are working outside the walls, either at
the Alouette River hatchery, helping out at Albion fairgrounds, with
events such as working on the airport doing brush clearing in Golden
Ears Provincial Park.

The crews save the district about $265,000 a year, according to a
report last year to Maple Ridge council.

Fraser Regional is scheduled to expand by another 135 cells, with
construction to start next year.

The extra room will be welcome, but Purdy says the government still
will have difficulty staffing it because of the lower wages it pays.

As of a few weeks ago, 465 inmates were housed at Fraser Regional. The
prison's original capacity was 254.