B.C.'s Children and Youth Representative Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond wants a moratorium on the provincial government's plan to close the jail unit for girls in Prince George.
"I'd like to see the brakes put on this," Turpel-Lafond said
Thursday.
She suggested the moratorium should last at least a year to allow proper consultation with community groups and those who work with youth.
The units in Prince George and Victoria will be closed and the service will be centralized in Burnaby, B.C. Children and Family Minister Mary McNeil said last week, with the change occurring in
mid-February.
The average daily population for girls in custody is three in Prince George, five in Victoria and eight in Burnaby, and the move will save $2.5 million, which will be focused instead on other elements of youth justice and special-needs youth.
Prime among Turpel-Lafond's concerns is that girls age 12 to 18 years old will be held in police cells while awaiting transfer to Burnaby, and questioned RCMP's ability to take care of them while in their hands.
"I'm not casting any aspersions on the policing; it's just that it's not the institutional setting in which to support young women who may have been traumatized,"
Turpel-Lafond said.
The distance from their homes to Burnaby is also a problem, said Turpel-Lafond, particularly for aboriginal girls who have a "fundamental right to be connected to their families and culture."
And the short distance from Burnaby to Vancouver's Downtown East Side is a worry for Turpel-Lafond. While the Burnaby Youth Custody Services Centre has been a closed or secured-custody facility, the change means it will now also house girls in open custody, which means they can go offsite under various terms and conditions.
Reached Thursday, McNeil said some additional time will be taken to address concerns raised about the Prince George closure but the plan is still to complete the changeover in short order.
"We're going to have this discussion first and I've asked them [senior staff] to do it as soon as possible," McNeil said. "If we can tweak our program so that it addresses the concerns and still do what's best for the girls, I'm all for it."
On the concern about holding the girls in police cells, McNeil said they'll be in them for only short periods and once in Burnaby they'll be closely watched to make sure they won't stray into the Downtown East Side and other areas where they should not be. McNeil maintained their stays in Burnaby will generally be shorter than they were in Prince George and they will have access to a wider array of programs.
