MPs CALL FOR ACTION AT FEDERAL PRISONS

Public Safety Critics Denounce the Escalating Violence Against
Convicts and Guards

B.C. Opposition MPs are calling for urgent action to help prison
guards deal with escalating gang and drug violence in federal
institutions.

Both the Liberal and New Democratic Party public safety critics
responded Monday to a Sun report about two prison lockdowns after a
series of convict-on-convict attacks related to control of the drug
trade inside.

NDP MP Penny Priddy has set up a meeting with the Union of Canadian
Correctional Officers to discuss the threat to their members trying to
intervene in violent confrontations.

Both Mountain prison in Agassiz and Matsqui Institution in Abbotsford
have been locked down after stabbings and assaults last week.

"Violence is too common in Canada's prisons and Canada's correctional
workers are too often the victims," Priddy said. "We have officers in
danger, two federal B.C. prisons are on lockdown and many more are
facing the same increase in drug and gang-related crime inside prison.
When will [Public Safety Minister] Stockwell Day take his employees'
very real concerns and act on them?"

Liberal critic Ujjal Dosanjh said the crisis in prisons will only get
worse with tough new "law and order" initiatives by the Conservative
government to put more criminals behind bars.

"The government is totally inept at managing these kinds of issues,"
Dosanjh said in an interview from India, where he is on holidays. "If
they can't even manage those in the prison already, how can they
manage more overcrowded prisons? Things are bound to get worse before
they get better."

Both MPs said they were shocked to learn that federal correctional
officers in B.C. are still waiting for stab-resistant vests that were
promised more than a year ago.

Day's spokeswoman Melissa LeClerc said Monday she was under the
impression the vests had already been received.

She said several of the issues raised in The Sun story are already
under review after a report last month on how to deal with problems in
federal correctional institutions.

"It is obviously a priority for us," LeClerc said.

But she said she did not know how long it would take to respond to the
report, which has 109 recommendations.

The union's regional president Gord Robertson told The Sun that the
attacks last week -- six at Matsqui and one at Mountain -- were
related to gang-related control of the drug trade inside the prisons.

"We are seeing a lot more young inmates coming in with those kind of
gang affiliations. There has always been the drug problem in prisons,
but now it seems there is a real battle between the younger punk-type
inmates and the older ones who have been in for a while," Robertson
said.

A recent B.C. Court of Appeal case launched by Hells Angel member
Ronaldo Lising gave a glimpse into the gang world inside. Lising,
convicted on drug charges, protested his transfer from medium-security
Mission Institution to maximum security Kent prison because of
"allegations that the appellant was involved in the muscling and
intimidation of other inmates."

Lising ended up being transferred to Matsqui -- another
medium-security facility before an appeal of the decision could be
heard. He still wanted the case to go before the B.C. Court of Appeal,
but the justices dismissed his application Monday.

In another case, notorious gangster Parminder Singh (Peter) Adiwal,
who pleaded guilty to a violent drug-related kidnapping, is set to go
to trial next fall after being charged with trafficking inside the
provincial jail where he was serving an unrelated sentence.

The federal report made several recommendations about eliminating
drugs from jails, including enhancing perimeter control, more drug
detection dogs and better searches of vehicles and individuals
entering the penitentiary.