A B.C. corrections officers working at the Vancouver Island Regional Correctional Centre in Saanich was assaulted on Friday by an inmate being booked into the jail, says a union official.
Dean Purdy, BCGEU vice-president representing corrections officers and sherrifs, confirmed to the Times Colonist that an inmate attacked a correctional officer working in the admissions and discharge department at the jail during an intake process.
“During the struggle, the inmate bit one of our COs in the arm, resulting in puncture and bite marks,” Purdy said.
The corrections officer, who had to go to the emergency department for his injuries, has since been discharged and is at home recuperating, Purdy said.
A full investigation will be conducted by the jail’s occupational health and safety committee, he said.
Purdy, a corrections supervisor at the Vancouver Island Regional Correctional Centre who wasn’t working at the jail at the time of the incident, said there would have been an “immediate response within 30 seconds” if the officer triggered their personal alarm pager.
B.C. Corrections did not respond to a request for comment on Saturday.
Like other jails across B.C., violent incidents at the Wilkinson Road Jail have increased in recent years, Purdy said.
“When you have more inmates in confined spaces, we have historically seen a rise in violence — and that’s what’s happening now.”
Inmate counts at the jail dropped in 2020 at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, but have ticked up since, he said.
As a result, there have been more violence, both inmate-on-inmate and inmate-on-officer violence, he said.
Two inmates at the Vancouver Island Regional Correctional Centre were injured and taken to hospital after an incident in October.
Purdy said the union would like to see additional measures, such as more corrections officers during the intake process, as well as increasing the number of corrections officers in jail sections where inmates live.
