Province studying expanding jail system

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This article was published 21/06/2011 (5468 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The province has created a three-person committee to study how best to expand Manitoba’s jail capacity over the next five to 10 years.

There have been 520 new beds added to Manitoba jails since 1999, and another 422 are under construction. “But even if those were all finished tomorrow, we would still have a challenge,” justice minister Andrew Swan said today at a news release.

The three members of the new committee, whom Swan called “distinguished Manitobans,” will be Richard Bruce, former chief of the Brandon Police Service, Lucille Bruce, director of the Native Women’s Transition Centre, and Dennis Bracken, a professor of social work at the University of Manitoba.

Richard Bruce has 35 years of experience in policing. Lucille Bruce is an expert on the urban aboriginal community, and Dennis Bracken’s work specializes in criminal justice issues, including aboriginal justice.

The committee will look into both the construction of new correctional facilities and adding on to existing ones.

It will also make advice about what services and retraining should be available to inmates in jails to avoid repeat offences, Swan said. And it will pay special attention to the aboriginal and new immigrant prison populations.