Nine months after the closure of the Victoria Youth Custody Centre was announced, the facility is still technically functioning in ghost mode, a shadow of its former self.
One small unit of the building remains open and operates to support the transportation of youth to and from court and custody. But it’s used only intermittently, about 30 per cent of the time, as needed. So most of the facility is shuttered, and the one remaining functional part is empty 70 per cent of the time.
Since Sept. 1, the average daily count at the centre has been 0.4 youth, according to the Ministry of Children and Family Development.
Nonetheless, five regular staff remain in what the government calls the workforce adjustment process. They takes turns staffing the facility around the clock, obviously with not much to do.
Responding to a check last November, the government said 10 staff were in the workforce adjustment process, but it was expected to conclude by the end of the year.
Three weeks past that marker, there are still five on hand, which illustrates how long it takes for staffing changes to reflect policy decisions.
The sole reason the unit is still open is local police departments’ refusal to go along with the ministry’s original plan of handling short-term remands and pre-trial holds by housing young offenders in police jail cells. That was ordered by the ministry the day the YCC closure was announced last April.
The plan got as far as the chief provincial court judge, who notified judges of the upcoming change. But police balked, saying adult jail cells are completely inappropriate and would leave departments open to all kinds of complaints. The most obvious would be that housing young offenders in adult facilities is expressly prohibited under the federal youth criminal justice act.
There were a few subsequent efforts to persuade police to change their minds, but they held firm. There haven’t been any meetings on the topic for several months.
The several dozen staff on hand at the time the closure was announced have dispersed in various directions. A small handful were named to a community support team, working out on the street helping youth who are struggling. They recently moved back to the Youth Custody Centre, but only because the government is vacating the downtown building in which they were based. The government said it’s a short-term move that will last one or two months.
As for the youth in custody, the original plan has been largely executed, for better or worse. The dwindling number of youth who were housed at the centre for longer than overnight stays have been relocated to a larger centre in Burnaby.
The Victoria centre built a reputation as a place where a high-functioning team was making a difference with troubled youth. The Burnaby centre, by contrast, was known as a facility with gang problems. The Times Colonist reported last year on government statistics showing a spike in the number of violent incidents being logged there.
The ministry’s recently released performance review includes a section on youth justice that’s relevant to the closure of the facility.
A dramatic decade-long decline in the custody rate was the stated reason for the closure. B.C. had lost $4.5 million in federal funding based on the steady decline, and decided to make up the shortfall by shutting down the Victoria centre.
The most recent report confirms the trend, pinpointing the plummeting rate of youth court cases over the last 15 years due to more diversion.
That’s occurring nationally as well, but the rate is falling faster in B.C.
The performance review said there was a daily average of 69 youth incarcerated (remanded and sentenced) in the year ending March 2014, compared to 82 the previous year. For remand and pre-trial detention, the daily average was 37, down slightly from the previous year.
Sources said the original indications were that the YCC would be completely shut down by fall. It didn’t happen and doesn’t look as if it will happen any time soon. Whatever progress is being made on finding an alternative is being made very quietly, if at all.
