Fate of Nunavut young offenders worries legal aid lawyers

Legal aid lawyers in Iqaluit say they are concerned about the well-being of youth currently being held in the Young Offenders Facility if the Nunavut government moves them out to make room for adult inmates.

Territorial justice officials are currently looking for ways to ease chronic overcrowding at Iqaluit's Baffin Correctional Centre, where adult offenders are housed.

The Baffin Correctional Centre has a capacity of 65 but often houses more than that 96 at one point last year.

In March, Premier Paul Okalik said 45 of the adult jail's inmates were being held in a facility in Yellowknife, and another 10 were detained in Ottawa.

One option under consideration to ease the burden is to use the youth facility, where only five of the 15 beds were being used in March.

That's an idea that lawyers with the Maliiganik Tukisiiniakvik legal aid centre do not oppose, given the severe overcrowding at the adult jail. But executive director Chris Debicki said they are worried about what would happen to the youth that would have to move out if it becomes an adult jail.

"Our fear is that the plan may be to ship those kids to alternative facilities outside of the territory," Debicki told CBC News.

"If the correctional centre were simply to expand next door and take over the youth facility for adult inmates, we're concerned that there's not a viable alternative, another option for housing youth in crisis who are in custody."

Debicki said most of the staff at the youth facility,which is located next to the Baffin jail,speak Inuktitut and provide Inuit cultural programming to the young inmates. Sending the youth out of Nunavut would force them away from their families and their culture, he said, creating problems related to dislocation.

Canada's Inuit organization also has concerns about the possibility of troubled youth getting shipped out of Nunavut. But Inuit Tapriirit Kanatami president Mary Simon told CBC News that she is more worried about the reasons the Baffin Correctional Centre has so many inmates in the first place.

"It tells us something, that we have a problem with our health, social, justice system," Simon said. "That needs to be addressed as well, so that we don't have to keep enlarging our facilities to take these people in."

Okalik, who is alsoNunavut's justice minister, has said he does not want young offenders to be sent out of the territory.

Corrections officials are expected to submit their list of options to the Nunavut legislative assembly soon, but no timeline has been set for any final decisions.