The Hook

A battle is brewing in Burnaby over the province’s plans to build a new prison in the city.

The facility, billed as a “secure, state-of-the-art” remand centre to be opened in 2012, would be placed on the site of a former youth detention centre on Willingdon Avenue, across from BCIT’s Burnaby campus.

But one city councillor calls the idea “insane.”

“This is not 1928, where Burnaby was the boondocks and it was nothing but forest and undeveloped land out there,” said Coun. Nick Volkow.

“You’ve got major educational institutions. You’ve got all kinds of facilities. This is not what you plunk right there.”

City hall is worried that the proposed prison, which could ultimately house 700 prisoners if double-bunked in 360 cells, would not fit in with what the city sees as a central hub of research and tech companies. Its location within two kilometers of schools, churches and daycares is also causing “significant concern,” as is the site’s distance from the nearest provincial courthouses.

But the province, which shut down Burnaby’s Provincial Court as part of cost-cutting measures in 2002, now sees the location near Highway #1 as ideal for dispersing prisoners to other Lower Mainland courthouses.

“It is a very safe and very secure facility. We don’t believe that locating it at this site would create any risk to the public,” said Solicitor-General John van Dongen.

Van Dongen says a new prison is necessary because of an expanding population of provincial inmates. B.C.’s correctional centres held a “record” 2,883 inmates at one point last year, van Dongen said, compared with the previous year’s daily average of 2,668.

One criminologist says a new prison would pose a “near zero” risk to the community.

“There’s not a chance in hell that they’re negatively impacted in terms of public safety,” said University of the Fraser Valley criminologist Darryl Plecas, who studied the impact of prisons in the Fraser Valley.

“The so-called expected drain – whether you’re talking social, economic, or public safety issues – just isn’t there,” Plecas said.

The Willingdon site is already properly zoned and provincially owned. But van Dongen says the proposal is still under “consultation,” with a proposed 2010 construction date.

Irwin Loy reports for Vancouver’s 24 hours.