The Victoria Police Department is correct in refusing to house a female attempted-murder suspect during a preliminary hearing. The region needs a remand facility for women; police departments should not enable the province in its neglectful behaviour.
Whitney Rae Furber is scheduled for a preliminary hearing with her co-accused, Dennis Grant Fletcher, beginning Oct. 28. The two face several charges, including attempted murder and aggravated assault, arising from an incident in February at the Strathcona Hotel. In April, they elected trial by Supreme Court judge and jury.
They have been in custody since then, Fletcher at the Vancouver Island Regional Correctional Centre and Furber at the Alouette Correctional Centre for Women in Maple Ridge, because the province has no facilities for female prisoners on the Island.
That means women involved in bail hearings, trials, sentencing and other court proceedings must either be held in police cells or flown to the mainland. The shuttling of prisoners to and from the mainland is expensive for taxpayers, a hardship for prisoners and not conducive to the efficient administration of justice.
VicPD has declined to house Furber for the five-day preliminary hearing. Insp. Grant Hamilton said the police jail is not suitable for holding women prisoners. It is a maximum-security temporary facility that operates 24 hours a day. A light is left on at all times to allow jail staff to check on prisoners every 15 minutes.
Cells are 3.25-square-metre (35-square-foot) cubicles, in which prisoners sleep on a rubber mat on the floor next to a toilet and a washbasin. While women are kept in separate cells from men, they are not separated from sounds. The jail is often a noisy place, with intoxicated prisoners yelling and screaming, and kicking and rattling the steel doors.
If a woman on remand requires medical attention, she must be taken to the hospital, which requires paramedics, an ambulance and two officers to escort the prisoner.
It鈥檚 a bare-bones place meant to hold people for short periods, until a crisis has passed or until other arrangements are made; being required to endure it for more than a few hours would be a hellish experience.
The West Shore RCMP detachment has not been asked to accommodate Furber, but like the Victoria police jail, it is not meant to be a remand centre.
A Justice Ministry spokesman said last week attempts were being made to find appropriate housing for Furber during the preliminary hearing. But makeshift arrangements aren鈥檛 the answer. This isn鈥檛 the first time the problem has arisen; it won鈥檛 be the last.
Shirley Bond, justice minister at the time, said last spring that there are not enough women prisoners to justify building a separate remand centre in the capital region. A comforting thought to some, perhaps, but of little comfort for those who have to endure nights in a police jail during a trial or hearing.
A stay in police cells has been likened to solitary confinement, but solitary confinement is a punishment. Women who are awaiting trial have not been convicted; they do not deserve to be punished before conviction.
Serving sentences on the mainland is a hardship for women prisoners from the Island, but if the numbers don鈥檛 justify a women鈥檚 correctional centre here, transporting them to the mainland to serve their sentences is reasonable.
A remand centre would be less costly, and would not have to be large. It鈥檚 a deficiency the province should address.
Reasonable access to the justice system and decent treatment while in custody are basic human rights.
