The Edmonton Remand Centre currently accepts new inmates 24 hours a day, but a new provincial plan intended to cut costs would see the doors closed between 11:00pm and 7:00am.
The union that represents guards at the facility was contacted three weeks ago and informed that night admissions at both the Edmonton and Calgary centres would be eliminated April 1st, along with five or six positions at each facility.
The union believes the decision will threaten the safety of the staff at the Remand Centre.
"It’s just one of many cuts the department has decided to impose on our members. What they’re asking is to take five or six available staff between those hours and take them out of the building," Cec Cardinal, chairman of Alberta Union of Provincial Employees Local 3, which represents the guards said.
"Regardless of whether or not we’re in the process of admitting offenders, we still have the responsibility to ensure the safety of the building as a whole."
The union plans to hold an information picket to protest the cutbacks at 3:00pm on Friday.
Edmonton Police Association president Tony Simioni says the move will put a huge strain on police resources.
"From 11 p.m. to 7 a.m., that’s prime time for us. That’s when most of our arrests are processed, that’s just the nature of the beast," he said.
When a suspect is arrested and taken into custody they are put through the Edmonton police arrest processing unit and kept in a police holding cell before appearing before a justice of the peace who decideds whether or not they should be granted bail. Suspects who are denied bail are sent to the Edmonton Remand Centre.
In 2009 5,600 people were brought into the police arrest processing unit between 11:00pm and 9:00am. 2,900 of them were sent to the Remand Centre.
Simioni fears that if the centre stops accepting overnight admissions police officers will become babysitters or they’ll be forced to release suspects on promise to appear.
"When our cells are full and remand isn’t accepting new prisoners on intake, that leaves us severely lacking in space for the people that we arrest in the course of our normal business. That backlogs everything and everyone — it’ll backlog from our lockup facilities at headquarters, back to the division, back to the street, and it will have an impact," Simioni said.
Police holding cells can only hold 35 people, including staff, before a code red is declared and no new suspects can be admitted. In 2009 a code red was issued 29 times.
"We try to restrict who we put into cells as it stands when we’re at full capacity, but it’s going to be even worse," Simioni said.
With files from The Edmonton Journal
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