Close to 70 per cent of the people booked into the New Westminster Police Department’s jail cells in 2023 resided outside the city.
At its February meeting, the police board received a report as part of the New Westminster Police Department’s requirements under the new BC Provincial Policing Standards. This year’s report related to promoting unbiased policing focused on a prisoner records analysis report.
According to the NWPD report, 775 individuals were booked into New Westminster police cells between Jan. 1 and Dec. 31, 2023. They represented a total of 1,139 prisoner records, when counting individuals who were booked in on multiple occasions.
Of those booked into NWPD cells last year, 82 per cent (636) were male, 17.7 per cent (137) were female, 0.1 per cent (one) was gender diverse, and 0.1 per cent (one) was unknown. (These are the categories available in the police reporting system.)
In terms of their residential status, New West residents comprised 29.8 per cent (231) of the visits to the local police cells.
The report stated 67.8 per cent (526) came from outside of New Westminster, 1.9 per cent (15) had an unknown jurisdiction outside of New West, 0.2 per cent (two) had no fixed address, and 01. per cent (one) did not have a residency listed.
In a report to the police board, Insp. Trevor Dudar said the data was collected during the booking process of all arrested persons who were brought into in the New Westminster Police Department’s detention facility.
The data was entered into I-Book (a computerized prisoner booking system) and stored in LMD PRIME (a provincial records information management system), where it was extrapolated for the purpose of the report.
The PRIME system includes nine options for listing ethnicity: Asian; Black; Caucasian; Hispanic; Indigenous; Middle Eastern; Other; South Asian; and Unknown.
The disaggregated data included in the report outlined the ethnicity of people booked into the NWPD cells in 2023: Caucasian – 55.8 per cent (433); Indigenous – 12.6 per cent (98); South Asian – 8.1 per cent (63); Black – 7.4 per cent (58); Asian – 5.1 per cent (40); Middle Eastern – 4.6 per cent (36); Hispanic – 3.2 per cent (25); Unknown – 2.3 per cent (18); and Other – 0.5 per cent (four).
New Westminster Police Department Chief Const. Dave Jansen told the board “this is completely new reporting” to the board, as it relates to new provincial policy standards that came into effect on July 30, 2023. He said the legislation requires the police department to do an annual analysis in one of three areas – and this is the area the NWPD chose for 2023.
Jansen said the data is not “super accurate” because it’s collected in a number of ways. That includes self-reporting by the individual, carryover data that’s already in the NWPD computer system, and observations by NWPD staff.
“It’s not the cleanest way to get data, for sure. We do the best that we can,” he said. “A lot of folks will have ID. You go off of that; that may not even be accurate. So a lot of it really comes down to the individuals telling you where they live.”
New requirements
The report to the police board was an annual audit related to the New Westminster Police Department’s Unbiased Policing policy. It allows for monitoring for systemic inequities in NWPD service delivery.
This year’s analysis focused on the gender, ethnicity and residential status of persons who were the subject of a prisoner booking in 2023.
New Westminster police board member Mary Trentadue thanked NWPD staff for the report, saying it responds to topics the board has discussed in the past. While a “fairly large” number of people booked into NWPD cells were from outside New West, Trentadue said she’d like future reports to compare the ethnicity statistics of people booked into jail cells with the ethnicity stats of New Westminster’s residents.
“I think that would be really useful information when we are looking at this report,” she said. “I know it’s tricky with the jurisdiction piece, and I get that people that are transiting through New West.”
Trentadue questioned if the police department would be reporting to the board on prisoner bookings in the future.
Jansen said prisoner bookings were the focus of this year’s report, but the police department is permitted to report on other topics related to the provincial legislation in future years. He said it may beneficial for the board to provide direction to the police department about topics it would like the NWPD to report on, as part of this provincial requirement, in 2025.
“We have that flexibility,” he said. “As long as we do one (annual audit) a year and we send it to the government, then we are all good. But the board has a lot of say and a lot of input into what we want to do with it.”
Trentadue said she’d like to continue seeing annual reporting that includes disaggregated data about prisoners booked into NWPD cells.
“I would hate for it to be a one-off, and next year do something completely different,” she said. “Maybe there’s a way that we can incorporate it into regular reporting but improve upon it each year and add something. I do think it’s useful information.”
Board member Patrick Lalonde questioned if it’s possible to “get a little bit more granular” when collecting information about the residency of people being booked into jail cells, rather than just saying they’re from an unknown jurisdiction outside of New Westminster. He said that would be helpful in terms of determining trends in where the offenders are coming from.
“I’d like us to break down where those folks are coming from,” he said.
Board member Heather Boersma said it would be helpful to see how New Westminster compares to what’s being seen by municipal police forces other jurisdictions.
New Westminster Police Department staff will report back to the police board at its September 2024 meeting to get input about its 2025 report to the province.
