Stumble Upon

del.icio.us

Digg

Facebook

Print

Email

speakup

HALIFAX - Nova Scotia Justice Minister Cecil Clarke will respond Tuesday to a list of 14 Labour Department safety compliance orders for a Halifax-area jail.

A recent health-and-safety review found a list of questionable incidents at the Central Nova Correctional Facility near Dartmouth. They included one in which a guard with only seven days on the job escorted an inmate outside the jail.

On Monday, Clarke called that "unacceptable" and said justice officials are working to comply with all 14 of the orders.

Guards have long complained that jail overcrowding and a lack of training and equipment for prisoner transfers have created unsafe working conditions across the province.

They have recently refused to do prisoner transfers in an attempt to underscore their point.

The move followed the April escape of high-risk offender Jermaine Carvery, who slipped out of leg irons while in the back of a corrections van taking him to a Halifax hospital.

Carvery ran away from two guards and is still at large.

The province, meanwhile, has had to enlist the help of jail managers, police and the sheriff's service to carry out a number of transfers.

"What we have are a series of items that validate those concerns that have been raised," Clarke said Monday. "They are concerns that affect management and operations and that we want to correct and we are going to do that."

The compliance orders come with a series of deadlines, with the last to be completed by May 30.

They call for such things as a detailed evaluation of the health-and-safety hazards associated with outside escorts, and requirements that guards who participate in transfers are trained to do so.

Clarke said he was prepared to announce interim steps to deal with the Labour Department findings, but wasn't prepared to rush the timetable on an independent external audit on jail safety and procedures expected in the fall.

"The audit is to be comprehensive, it is to be our blueprint and our map forward for corrections . . . trying to tell them to hurry up their work is not the appropriate thing to do," Clarke said.

But the opposition maintains it's clear the government must act sooner rather than later.

"The concerns are pretty obvious. The minister has been aware of them for a long time . . . let's go ahead, let's make these changes," said NDP justice critic Bill Estabrooks.

Liberal Leader Stephen McNeil said the government should move to at least provide guards with more training and intermediate weapons, such as batons and stun guns, for prisoner transfers.

"This report clearly highlights the fact this government hasn't been paying attention when it comes to what the guards have been saying," said McNeil.

"We will now push this government to make sure that we can move forward to protect Nova Scotians."