Does N.B. need a new $32-million jail? Province won't release records explaining decision

The New Brunswick government is withholding records that could explain its decision to spend $32 million building a new jail in the Fredericton region, a facility that two criminologists say won't make the city any safer.

The province announced plans to build a 109-bed jail last December, setting aside $2.5 million in the 2022-23 capital budget to plan and design the new building, and acquire the land where it will be built.

Construction is expected to begin in 2023-24.

In a newsrelease announcing the project, then-public safety minister Ted Flemming said the system is "stretched" to capacity and that "crimes requiring incarceration have been trending up, including trafficking, production and distribution of controlled substances."

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CBC News filed an access to information request to the Department of Justice and Public Safety, asking for records that detail the need for a new correctional centre, including records that discuss the business case for a new jail.

The request also asked for records detailing capacity issues within the current system.

But the department is withholding all of those records, including briefing materials about the proposed new jail, arguing they could reveal "advice, opinions, proposals or recommendations developed by or for the public body or a Minister of the Crown."

CBC has filed an appeal with the Ombud's office, which handles access to information appeals in the province.

It's the latest example of the government refusing to provide records that would show how it reached major decisions, and what kind of data it relied upon in the process.

Last month, Premier Blaine Higgs told CBC that he doesn't think it's realistic for him to write down details of all of the discussions he has with people, even if those discussions are key to understanding how decisions are made.

A week later, the premier also acknowledged he said "data my ass" when former education minister Dominic Cardy presented what Higgs considered to be "irrelevant" numbers on French second-language education.

In his resignation letter, Cardy said Higgs yelled the phrase at a senior civil servant because he didn't like what the figures showed.

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While speaking to reporters about crime on Tuesday, Public Safety Minister Kris Austin suggested anecdotes he's hearing about crime carry more weight than crime data.

"The problem we're having with the data is the data is not accurately relaying what we're seeing on the ground, and what we know. What we're hearing from municipal police forces, from RCMP, from mayors, from councillors, from residents."

Austin said his job is "to hear from people."

"It's not to just simply go over numbers all the time."

Criminologist Justin Pich, who has been studying prison construction for more than 15 years, suggested the provincial government doesn't have a business case to build a new jail.

"That they would block documents around economic impacts might suggest that they actually don't have a study ready to go for that," said Pich, who teaches at the University of Ottawa.

He said the government should put the brakes on its plans to build a new jail, and ask people in the Fredericton region what could be done to make them feel safer.

Jails weren't over capacity until announcement

"I'm pretty sure if they had those conversations with community-based organizations, as well as residents, that building a new prison in Fredericton would not be what they'd be spending $32 million on," he said.

"So the fact that they're withholding information, I think, should tell folks that they probably have a very weak hand."

The department has said the provincial correctional system was "at capacity" in mid-October of last year, with 498 men in custody. The system has space for 470 men.

But when CBC News requested population numbers for this story, the province's monthly data shows there were actually 469.2 men incarcerated on average in October 2021, just below the 470 capacity number.

A CBC analysis of the data in the department's annual reports shows there wasn't a significant upward trend in the number of men incarcerated in provincial jails between 2012 and 2021.

The average daily count of people incarcerated at the correctional centres formen never exceeded the capacity number of 470 at any point during that time.

And in 2020-21,the number of men in provincial jail on an average day actually decreased to 372.4, from 436 in 2019-20.

Monthly capacity data the province sent CBC News for this story shows the correctional system for men was not over capacity until months after the announcement, in February of this year. The figures for October 2022 had the highest capacity figures, at555.4 men on average.

In an emailed statement, a Department of Justice and Public Safety spokesperson pointed to data from police and Statistics Canada, posted on a crime dashboard on the province's website, that shows crime is increasing.

"The data supports and reinforces what law enforcement and New Brunswickers are telling us and that is; crime is going up, and serious crime is going up," the statement says.

"This is a trend here and across the country for several years."

Statistics Canada data from 2021 shows police-reported crime in Canada, measured by the Crime Severity Index, or CSI,increased by 6.2 per cent in New Brunswick last yearbut remained stable Canada-wide.

"By not providing more information as to the need for this facility, then we're left thinking, well, I guess we just have to take them at their word," said Michael Boudreau, a criminologist at St. Thomas University in Fredericton.

"But if there's no serious problem with crime or with over capacity, then is this really a wise use of public money? And I would argue at this point, no."

Austin suggested people need to report more crimes, so the data matches what he is hearing on the ground.

"In relation to crime going up in the province, I'm convinced it's happening."

What else could $32 million buy?

The $32 million earmarked for the new jail could pay for more than 2,200 harm reduction spaces, or drug treatment for 35 days and a year's worth of after care for almost 1,700 people, according to Pich.

Or it could pay for 800 permanent supportive housing spaces, at a cost of $40,000 per year each, he said, which could help people who are stuck in a cycle between homelessness and jail.

"For the government of New Brunswick to waste $32 million on building another site of human caging, when we know it's the most costly, ineffective, unjust and inhumane response to criminalized acts, is just a mistake," Pich said.

"There are other things that the government can spend its money on if enhancing community well-being and safety is its actual objective."

It could also be spent on providing services in existing provincial jails, Boudreau said.

Four years after the New Brunswick auditor general slammed the province for offering an "unacceptable" lack of access to addiction and mental health treatment inside provincial jails, more than half of her recommendations haven't been implemented, according to a followup report published by the auditor general earlier this year.

A war on drugs

The decision to build a new jail is the latest step in the Higgsgovernment's tough-on-crime agenda.

Last year, Flemming asked for the removal of the province's top Mountie, saying he no longer commanded his confidence. In his letter to RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki, Flemming called for the RCMP to demonstrate "that police recognize that drug-driven crime is by far the top priority for law enforcement in New Brunswick."

"The province has put a lot of money into government action on illegal drugs," Flemming told CBC in an interview last year. "We want to declare war on these people."

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The issue of drug crime came up in last week's throne speech, too.

"While your government continues to support law enforcement as they apply pressure to drug dealers preying on our most vulnerable, we must also help them address drug-driven crime," the speech says. "Property crime is rising as thieves steal from their neighbours to get money for drugs."

Most people convicted of serious drug-trafficking crimes would be serving sentences of two years or longer, meaning they'd be serving time in the federal system rather than in a provincial jail, Boudreausaid.

"So they need to ask themselves, who are we going to be arresting?" hesaid. "Who are we going to be placing in these facilities?"

Declaring war on drugs is a failed approach that hasn't worked in other jurisdictions, such as the United States, both Pich and Boudreau said.

"If the goal is to incarcerate people to significantly reduce crime, it's not going to happen," Boudreau said.