Adult and Youth Custody

ritish Columbia’s first jail, a simple wood-sided lockup in Fort

Victoria, was built in 1852, mainly as a means of punishing

Hudson’s Bay Company employees who were drunk or had
brawled once too often. The first full-scale prison, Victoria’s Bastion
Square Gaol, was built six years later. Over the next ninety years as British
Columbia developed as first a colony and, after 1871, as a province, jails
or prisons were built in many communities and cities, but there was little if
any formal instruction for prison officers—they learned what to do on the
job, wherever they worked in the province.

That changed after the B.C. Gaol Commission issued its 1950 report
recommending an in-service staff training system be established, including
post-recruitment instruction. Over the ensuing decades, training became
progressively more sophisticated. By the 1960s, corrections institutional
staff were being trained at the Pierce Creek Staff Training Academy in
Chilliwack, on the grounds of what had been a forestry camp operated by
the Corrections Branch. In 1974, the Pierce Creek Academy became part
of the Corrections Branch Staff Development Training Division, located in
Burnaby.

Four years later, the Division became one of the Justice Institute’s
founding partners under John Laverock, the first Director of the Corrections
Staff Development Division, which later became the Corrections Academy,
and the Corrections and Community Justice Division (CCJD) in 1998.

When it first became a Division of the Institute in 1978, there were
other, fundamental changes happening in institutional corrections. First,
there was a shift in the basic design of the province’s correctional institu-
tions, which meant that correctional officers would more closely supervise
inmates in smaller, more open, yet secure living units and no longer needed
firearms or firearms training. When the Lower Mainland Regional Correc-
tion Centre in Burnaby (better known as Oakalla Prison Farm) closed
in 1991, it marked the end of an era when prisons had been designed to
intimidate and punish. With the emphasis on rehabilitation and positive
change, the training of correctional officers in areas such as communica-
tion, facilitation skills, problem-solving and conflict resolution became
even more important.

n correctional facilities now, staff may be male or female and come from
a variety of ethnic backgrounds. The inmate profile has also changed in
step with B.C.’s expanding population demographics. Offenders may
well be immigrants from different cultural and religious backgrounds than
the officers. Correctional officers have also become more sensitive to First
Nations issues. On another level, they have also learned how to deal with

You custody staff
(cpposice) nicl vou
cffeidars devei0n
interoersore! ena
communication siilis
ivoral sport ond team-

rcieted activities.

At the Aicusiie
Corrections | Centre
jor Momun (above),

a facitity of ace7 or
meduiurn securicy in
Maple Race, insiructors
Lecanns Howard Jaf
end Jene ficindier
(nue) ce; recuoridi
cyTicers chout
Intecrated Offender
iVidMudemcht—using
those colscriul balls at
aach nlece as teeching
uis.