Court upholds B.C. prison warden’s order disallowing guitars in prison cells

OTTAWA — A Federal Court judge has thrown out a convicted killer’s challenge of a British Columbia prison warden’s decision not to allow the inmate to have an electric guitar in his cell.

A decision handed down last week says Patrick Fischer is an inmate at Kent Institution, a maximum-security prison in Agassiz, B.C., but he bought the guitar while an inmate at the medium-security Mission Institution.

The ruling says he was transferred back to the maximum security prison in April 2021, and the guitar was put in storage, but months later he grieved the institution’s decision that prevented him to keep the guitar in his cell.

The court ruling says the Kent warden has discretion on what inmates are allowed, but also a “standing order” disallowing inmates from keeping stringed instruments in cells “because they may jeopardize the safety and security of the Institution.”

Fischer appealed the prison’s decision to Federal Court, but Judge Julie Blackhawk found both the warden’s prohibition and the decision denying the electric guitar in the cell reasonable.

Fischer, who is serving a life sentence for the 1999 murder of 16-year-old Darci Drefko in Merritt, B.C., successfully won a similar case in 2021 when he took the government to court for the return of a PlayStation memory card that had been confiscated when he was transferred to a medium-security prison.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 30, 2024

The Canadian Press