A 26-year-old inmate was killed inside Montreal's Bordeaux jail on Friday, October 30.

According to TVA Nouvelles, Islam Belhadji was beaten and drowned, most likely in a cell, and was pronounced dead at hospital. TVA's sources say he had refused, or failed, to tamper with his cell window so that drone deliveries of drugs and cellphones could get inside. The Sûreté du Québec has opened an investigation. No arrest had been announced as of Tuesday.

Belhadji was not a hardened criminal. He was awaiting trial on a robbery charge and had pleaded guilty to four small thefts over the past two years. He had not been convicted of the charges he was being held on.

TVA's sources describe how it works. Inmates with money and connections force the most vulnerable prisoners to break the screens and windows of their cells. The package comes in through the weaker man's window, and if guards find the damage, he takes the blame. TVA reports this is the second killing of its kind at the jail this year, and that drones arrive at Bordeaux up to ten times a day.

On Tuesday, Radio-Canada's Isabelle Richer asked Quebec's new Minister of Internal Security, Guy Jr Lapointe, a former Sûreté du Québec officer, who makes the law in prison.

"Your question is extremely relevant," he said. "I won't hide from you that it's something that worries me."

Lapointe would not comment on the killing, citing the police investigation. He said a separate administrative investigation will look at whether there were failings inside the jail.

Richer pointed out that a pilot project to jam drones has been running for at least a year and asked when there would be real measures. Lapointe said several options "are currently being studied," and that Bordeaux is hard to protect because the site is "very vast" and surrounded by a densely populated neighbourhood.

Go Ad Free

Then he added a condition.

"We have to take into account what can be done technologically, but also the taxpayers' ability to pay, because it always comes back to that," he said. "We can have lots of ideas, but how realistic is it to put those ideas in place, given what they could cost?"

On the shortage of guards, he pointed to the jail's reputation. "It's a bit of a vicious circle," he said, "because the narrative, for several years, has been very negative" about life in detention and the work of correctional officers.

The government knew

His own ministry's statistics show the problem growing. Drone deliveries to Quebec jails more than doubled in four years. This summer, guards in the Montreal network, which includes Bordeaux, seized barely half the packages that were dropped.

The guards have been warning about it all year. In February, an officer leaving his shift at Bordeaux was followed by a drone. Mathieu Lavoie, president of the correctional officers' union, has asked for netting over the cell windows and an end to budget cuts.

Since September 28, inmates have faced harsher discipline for damaging jail infrastructure, such as a cell window. Had Belhadji broken his window, he could have been punished for it. According to TVA's sources, he refused, and he is dead.

Federal penitentiaries have the same problem. Last month, a drone flew through a broken window at the maximum-security prison in Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines and delivered a McDonald's meal and a bottle of alcohol. "One day we will have a major incident," warned Frédérick Lebeau, head of the federal guards' union.

Guards at both levels are asking for nets on the windows and more people on the floor. The minister says it will depend on what it costs.