The family of a 28-year-old man murdered in a Saskatoon prison is speaking out.
Patricia Nurse will never see her step-son Elvis Lachance again. The young man was found murdered in his prison cell last week.
Lachance wasn't a prisoner at the Saskatoon Correctional Centre. He was just remanded there awaiting court proceedings for a break and enter charge. But the provincial jail was 70 inmates over capacity, so he was put in a cell with a prisoner. Now that prisoner – 24-year-old Dallas Bird - has been charged with Lachance's murder.
Nurse believes overcrowding prisons has to stop. “Something has to be done. The law has to look at things differently, because there is too much danger the way they are doing things right now."
The Saskatchewan Ministry of Corrections and Policing says overcrowded prisons are a reality across Canada. In Saskatchewan, putting two inmates in a single cell has become commonplace.
The provincial jails have a process for deciding which inmates cell together. They look at the type of charges each face, if there are any gang affiliations, and whether the inmates know each other and get along.
Nurse believes that despite the selection process, violence between inmates bunking together is bound to happen. An ombudsman’s report last year found that Saskatchewan prisons are twice as full as they should be.
