Staff member hospitalized after assault at B.C. maximum security prison

A corrections officer at B.C.'s only maximum security federal prison was taken to hospital after an assault earlier this month.

The assault at Kent Institution in Agassiz happened on Sept. 1, the Correctional Service of Canada said in a statement released Thursday.

The service did not specify whether the staff member was a corrections officer or a different type of employee, but John Randle, regional president of the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers for the Pacific Region, confirmed in an interview with CTV News that the victim was an officer.

Randle said the officer was providing first aid to an inmate who had been stabbed when he was, himself, stabbed by a different inmate.

The CSC said the assailant has been identified and the assault is under investigation by both the institution and the Agassiz RCMP.

"The safety and security of institutions, their staff, and the public remains the highest priority in the operations of the federal correctional system," the CSC said in its statement.

"In order to improve practices aimed at preventing this type of incident, the Correctional Service of Canada will review the circumstances of the incident and take the appropriate measures."

UCCO members rallied in Abbotsford back in April to demand action from the CSC amid what they said was rising violence in federal prisons. 

Since then, the situation has worsened, Randle said.

"It's gotten a lot worse, as far as the violence goes," he said. "We're making those calls and we're asking the government to – at some point – step in, because we've lost a lot of our tools. One of our biggest tools was the loss of disciplinary segregation, which used to be a huge tool for us."

Other "tools" Randle mentioned included the ability to take away inmate privileges like recreation periods for disciplinary reasons and the need for the CSC and the Parole Board of Canada to consider in-prison assaults when weighing inmates' parole and statutory release applications.

The union is also pushing for inmates who assault corrections officers to be charged more often.

"We've had a struggle with, when officers get assaulted, having criminal charges pressed," Randle said. "We've heard a number of times from Crown counsel that it's not in the public interest to criminally charge somebody who's already in federal custody."

He said across the country corrections officers are assaulted almost daily. Though most of these assaults don't result in an officer being sent to hospital, the number of assaults involving weapons has also been rising, Randle said.

As for the victim of the Sept. 1 assault, the regional president said he's been discharged from hospital and is on "the cocktail," a treatment regimen given to officers who may have been exposed to bloodborne illnesses such as hepatitis and HIV.

"The stab injury was in his upper arm area, so he's in some sort of a sling to help restrict movement," Randle said. "There's some pretty heavy muscle damage, but he's expected to make a full recovery."