NEW LAWS MAY STRESS OVERCROWDED JAILS

IQALUIT - Maliiganik Tukisiiniakvik lawyer Scott Wheildon says
potential changes to Canada's laws would force judges to hand down
longer sentences, stressing Nunavut's already overcrowded justice system.

"Year after year, we have over 6,000 charges being laid in this
territory," said Wheildon. That's the number of charges per year, not
the number of people charged, he noted.

The Baffin Correctional Centre in Iqaluit has an official capacity of
65 beds but often houses more than 90 prisoners. The Ilavut
Correctional Healing Centre in Kugluktuk can house up to 12 in a
minimum-security environment. The tentatively-named Rankin Inlet
Healing Facility will have room for 46 prisoners and is scheduled to
open in 2011, according to Nunavut's assistant deputy attorney
general Doug Garson.

One of the bills the Senate is looking at is C-25, which would limit
the extra credit people commonly receive for time spent in custody
before trial. When they hand down sentences, judges often give double
or time-and-a-half credit for pre-trial custody, or "remand." For
example, someone who was in remand for three months waiting for trial
may have six months taken off their sentence.

The C-25 bill would make time-and-a-half the maximum remand credit,
and would limit the credit to one-for-one in most cases.

Doug Strader, manager of corrections, said usually more than half of
the people in custody are on remand rather than serving sentences.
This is true nationwide, not just in Nunavut, he said.

Across Canada and Nunavut, the proportion of people in custody who
are on remand versus serving sentences has been increasing for years.
Garson said it's not clear why that's happening.

Garson said one of the reasons he had heard from the south for the
C-25 bill was that it would stop people from drawing out the wait for
their trials so they can shave time off their sentences.

Another bill, C-15, would revise the Controlled Drugs and Substances
Act. Among other things, it would establish mandatory minimum
sentences for several drug offences including those for marijuana
smuggling and trafficking, both of which are frequent in Nunavut.

C-15 would mandate minimum sentences of a year to two years under
certain conditions, such as dealing drugs near a school, for example.

Wheildon is concerned mandatory minimum jail sentences would restrict
judges' options in sentencing.

"They take away the discretion of judges to put in an appropriate
sentence in each case," he said. "In my mind, the trial judge is the
appropriate person to assign a sentence, not the legislature."

Judges wouldn't be able to assign house arrests or conditional
sentences in such cases, he said, leaving them no alternative but to
send offenders into an already overcrowded penal system.

Nunavut's correctional system is chronically overcrowded and
prisoners are sometimes temporarily housed in RCMP holding cells
which aren't designed to hold people for more than a day or two.

Wheildon said the conditions in the RCMP cells don't meet the minimum
basic standards of the treatment of prisoners required under Canadian
and international law.

Garson said C-15 would not only stress Nunavut's correctional system.

"Certainly, adding new mandatory minimum penalties for certain
offences can lead to more offenders being incarcerated and that could
potentially lead to an increased strain on our correctional
facilities," he said. "But it should be noted that this is an issue
that we'll be confronting, all provinces and territories as a result
of the new legislation coming into force."

There are nearly a hundred Nunavummiut in custody outside Nunavut, in
Ontario and the NWT.