File Photo (Image Credit: CFJC Today)

By James Peters

UBCM Convention

Kamloops delegation to press government on in-custody funding at next week’s UBCM Convention

Sep 20, 2019 | 11:59 AM

KAMLOOPS — The Mayor of Kamloops says the cost of keeping prisoners in Kamloops will be among his top priorities at the Union of BC Municipalities Convention in Vancouver next week.

The convention allows local officials a chance to meet with provincial cabinet ministers on a wide variety of issues.

Speaking to CFJC’s Balance of Power, Mayor Ken Christian says, for a number of reasons, prisoners who are not the typical Kamloops RCMP arrestees are being held in cells at the local detachment.

“The whole nature of getting arrested in Barriere or getting arrested in Ashcroft and winding up in the Kamloops jail, or being a remand prisoner who the courts have sentenced to an intermittent sentence and that’s done in the Kamloops jail, or being a female prisoner and KRCC doesn’t have the capacity to house you, so it’s in the Kamloops jail,” said Christian.

Christian says those in-custody stays, some of which don’t even relate to what’s happening in Kamloops, are expensive.

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“These stays cost money. We’ve calculated the cost of having a prisoner in our jail system in Kamloops to be about $20 an hour. The recompense that we get from the government under the keeping of prisoners agreement, which hasn’t be revisited since 2002, is about $6-to-$8 an hour,” noted Christian.

A City of Kamloops delegation will meet next week with Public Safety Minister and Solicitor General Mike Farnworth, and Christian says this issue will top his agenda.

“Every time we pick someone and are having them even overnight in our cells, it’s a $200 bill. We’re not getting that compensation back,” said Christian. “I guess that’s fair in terms of those people who we arrest who are own residents we have to police. But when we’re starting to house prisoners from outside, I think that goes a bit too far.”

Christian notes other important meetings will include speaking to Finance Minister Carole James about cannabis revenue, and meeting with Education Minister Rob Fleming about land acquisition for schools.