It got no attention whatsoever during the spring election, but Manitoba’s exploding inmate population in provincial jails is expected to be one of the biggest challenges facing the new Tory government.

According to ministerial briefing notes made public last week, the Manitoba Bureau of Statistics is projecting the province’s inmate population will skyrocket by more than 50% over the next seven years. The MBS projects the adult inmate population will exceed 3,700 by 2023, up from the current count of over 2,400.

That’s bad news considering the jail population has already more than doubled over the past 10 years and justice officials are running out of room to accommodate the growing demand.

Even a new jail planned to replace the aging and chronically overcrowded Dauphin Correctional Centre will only add an additional 119 beds to the system. That’s only a fraction of the estimated 1,300 more inmates Manitoba Justice is expected to stuff into provincial jails over the next seven years.

Beyond the new Dauphin facility, there’s very little in the way of planning to deal with the expected influx of new inmates, one of the many political headaches the new Pallister government has inherited from the outgoing NDP administration.

While some progress was made over the past two years to control the soaring number of inmates, provincial jails continue to operate well above their design capacity, putting both staff and offenders at risk. Both the Winnipeg Remand Centre and the Brandon Correctional Centre are still using temporary dormitories for their inmates in gymnasiums.

The reality is, very little has been done to either reduce the remand population in jails — the chief reason for the overcrowding — or expand jail capacity.

Remand inmates, those awaiting their court dates, continue to make up about two-thirds of the jail population, including at Headingley jail which has experienced massive overcrowding for years.

Surprisingly, Manitoba’s jail woes — and justice issues generally — weren’t a factor in the April election. None of the major political parties paid much, if any, attention to the problem of what to do with overcrowded jails, court backlogs or soaring remand numbers. Manitoba has the highest per capita incarceration rates and the worst violent crime in the country, yet those issues got very little play during the campaign.

Now it will be up to the new Tory government to tackle a problem their predecessors were unable to solve. And whatever they decide to do, they better do it quickly if the MBS jail population projections are accurate.

“Nearly all adult facilities continue to experience overcrowding and consistently operate at approximately 120% of rated capacity,” a departmental briefing note for Justice Minister Heather Stefanson says.

And with little to no extra capacity in the system, it’s unclear how Manitoba’s correctional facilities will be able to absorb a net increase of more than 1,300 inmates between now and 2023.

The primary response over the past 10 years to the massive influx of provincial inmates has been to expand the Milner Ridge Correctional Centre and set up temporary accommodations in jails. But outside of the planned Dauphin facility, there are no other plans to expand jail capacity. And there is only so much space left in places like gymnasiums to house inmates.

Which means the Pallister government has a huge challenge ahead of it, both logistically — since it takes years to plan and build extra jail space — and financially, because the new government inherited a $1-billion deficit.

Unless government can figure out a way to reduce its remand numbers by getting cases through court quicker, they will have no choice but to increase jail space. Unless, of course, they’re willing to accept the risks that go along with chronic overcrowding, including poor offender rehabilitation outcomes, increased violence in jails and even the risk of jail riots, which is not something anyone wants.

Either way, this will be one of the new government’s most significant challenges, which will become increasingly apparent over the next few years.