As a former director of the Victoria Youth Custody Centre (when it was on Pembroke Street), I have followed the debate about the closure of the current centre with both interest and distress.
It has resounded with the rhetoric of indignation, but reliable information, analysis and insight have been in short supply. Local politicians will naturally argue to protect local resources, but this important discussion requires a provincial perspective.
Almost lost in the competition to find fresh phrases of outrage is that our youth crime rate and our use of custody have both declined to the point where the closure of another custody centre is possible. This is a significant achievement.
Closing a jail undoubtedly precipitates some practical issues, including how to manage the small number of youth still requiring custody and how to assist the dedicated staff who have worked in the centre. But challenges like these should not obscure the encouraging development that lies at the heart of this story.
Placing youth in police cells, even temporarily, is hardly a best practice, but with custody centres only in Prince George, Burnaby and Victoria, it is a necessity in most of B.C. And if it is an unacceptable practice to lodge Victoria-area youth in police cells, principled people would say it is also unacceptable in Cranbrook, Prince Rupert, Kelowna and every other community far from a custody centre. Eradicating this practice would entail building a dozen tiny custody centres in every area of the province. Most of these would operate with fewer than five youth, and sometimes would be empty, with the taxpayers paying idle staff.
Clearly, we need more nuanced thinking than categorically insisting it is wicked to put youth in police lockups. First of all, we must determine how many custody centres we need. With an average daily provincial custody count of about 75 youth, the Burnaby centre can actually accommodate them all, and a case could be made for a single “British Columbia Youth Custody Centre.”
I would argue against that. It is always helpful to have at least one alternative to which youth can be transferred to separate volatile combinations and help manage behaviour.
Nonetheless, as you increase the number of custody centres, and spread the incarcerated youth among them, the cost per youth increases dramatically. If running with 15 youth in residence, the cost per youth per day in Victoria is about $1,000. Responsible people, including those who care deeply about kids, have got to ask: “Is there something better we could do with this money?’
Keeping youth closer to home is an attractive but problematic argument. Even when there is a centre close to home, some youth will be transferred elsewhere for reasons mentioned earlier. And in a case of “be careful what you ask for,” proximity to a custody centre can make custody a more attractive sentencing option. This might please some people, but those who have studied the evidence know that custody is best employed as the option of last resort.
Parallels can be drawn between the situation of youth and that of adult women offenders, and indeed, mentally disordered persons in conflict with the law. The discussion really comes down to this: How do we manage vulnerable groups of accused persons and offenders when their numbers in most regions are too small to make the full suite of custodial and non-custodial services practical and affordable? I think there are four elements we need to pursue or enhance.
• A review of police lockups to ensure there is adequate separation by gender and age, and facilities for hygiene and visits.
• Timely, specialized transport of vulnerable accused persons to appropriate facilities.
• A robust system of alternatives to custody for both remanded and sentenced persons (largely in place for youth now).
• Support for maintaining links between offenders distant from home and their families, through both technology and travel subsidies for families (in place for female youth now).
If the Victoria centre can be made viable by co-locating some other service, so be it. But we need to move beyond a Victoria-centric debate and examine the challenges in serving women, youth and other vulnerable people throughout the province. This requires a clearer and calmer discussion than we have witnessed in the aftermath of the announcement about closing Victoria Youth Custody Centre.
Steve Howell was director of the Victoria Youth Custody Centre from 1997 to 2002, and is now a criminal justice instructor at Camosun College.
