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Following a year where corrections facilities in Ontario came under the microscope, the Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre looms large as a symbol of the problems in the province’s jails.
Mattresses tossed on the floor of damp segregation shower cells because the jail was too crowded to keep inmates in regular cells.
A pair of suicides by inmates housed in solitary confinement, both after they had been removed from suicide watch.
Another inmate who was found mentally unfit after spending what was later revealed to be nearly two years in segregation while awaiting his trial. The inmate — Mutiur Rehman — eventually had to be hospitalized until he was well enough to plead guilty to manslaughter and sentenced to five-and-a-half years in prison.
There were also complaints about a woeful lack of rehabilitative programming, like Alcoholics and Narcotics Anonymous, because of regular lockdowns that made access to the institution spotty at best for the volunteers who administered the programs.
There were complaints about health care, missed medications and psychiatric services that couldn’t keep up with the needs of a jail population where it was estimated that a quarter of the inmates were mentally ill.
And the jail’s own community advisory board delivered a scathing annual report in March that noted the majority of the recommendations it made a year earlier had been ignored while pointing out that strip searches occur too frequently and that the jail’s food is awful. The board also expressed concerns over the treatment of mentally ill inmates and the use of segregation.
Ontario’s ombudsman noted in his annual report the jail was in the top three for complaints. It was also the only one in the top five most complained about jails that had fewer than a thousand inmates. Its 394 complaints were close to the 455 complaints at the Toronto Detention Centre, which can house up to 1,650 inmates. Ottawa’s jail holds 505.
By the end of 2016, however, there were the first glimpses of real change to a detention centre that had largely been ignored for years.
Yasir Naqvi.
A task force appointed by then-corrections minister Yasir Naqvi to examine the problems with overcrowding inside the detention centre returned with 42 recommendations to fix the jail. The government has pledged to act on all of them. By the end of October, the province said 11 of the recommendations had been met. Another update on the ministry’s progress is expected by the end of January.
Many of the other recommendations are being phased in provincewide. Naqvi, in his new role as attorney general, announced the creation of bail beds and an expansion of the bail supervision program to allow more offenders to be released on bail earlier this month. Ottawa’s program will be expanding to Perth, Pembroke and L’Original and it’s expected there will now be room for more than 200 additional accused people who otherwise might not have qualified for bail.
There was also the promise of new judges, more prosecutors and duty counsel lawyers, including some posted inside detention centres in an effort to speed up efforts by prisoners to seek release and reduce delay in court.
The province has also acted on calls for changes to segregation, altering policy so the number of consecutive days an inmate can spend in segregation for disciplinary reasons has been cut in half from 30 to 15. The ministry also announced a weekly segregation review committee will be created at each jail to conduct case reviews of all inmates in segregation. The loss of all privileges in disciplinary segregation will also be eliminated.
The government also appointed former federal correctional investigator Howard Sapers to lead a provincial review and make recommendations into the use of segregation.
The province announced other changes in December, including the hiring of more health care and recreational staff, along with more correctional officers and managers. The 239 new hires will include 22 nurses, 22 mental health nurses, 22 social workers and eight psychologists along with “segregation managers” at the jails with the highest segregation use. The province also promised to improve their facilities and provide more clinical supports.
Ontario’s ministry of health is also funding more mental health court support workers and the creation of “safe beds” as an alternative to hospital or jail.
Here’s a look back at the past 12 months inside Ottawa’s jail:
Shower cells: The infamous cells are located in the jail’s four wing segregation area. Internal ministry emails revealed that 10 inmates had been housed in the shower cells between November 2015 and the end of March 2016. Eight inmates spent a single night in the cells, while two spent multiple nights. Those 10 inmates were placed in the shower cell despite an internal jail directive saying the segregation cells shouldn’t be used. The ministry chalked their continued use up to “operational realities in the institution.”
One of the jail’s notorious shower cells. The jail stopped using shower cells to house inmates after the Citizen reported about their use.
Stories about the shower cells in the Citizen prompted then-minister Naqvi to permanently end the “appalling” practice and led to the appointment of the task force which would make 42 recommendations for fixing the jail. But their continued use, just days after the minister ordered it to stop, led to the removal of the jail’s superintendent. The province said it had acted on 11 of the easiest-to-fix recommendations, including providing inmates with shower cells and cleaning and fixing up the jail. The next update is expected by Jan. 31, 2017, but many of the report’s recommendations are being established in jails across the province.
Suicides: A pair of inmates — Justin St-Amour, 32, and Yousef Hussein, 27 — took their own lives after being housed in segregation cells in the Innes Road jail. Both used their bed sheets to hang themselves, and both suicides occurred after the inmates had been removed from suicide watch. Their families have demanded answers about what led to the deaths. St-Amour, who was a diagnosed schizophrenic, was frequently on suicide watch when he was in the jail. According to a police report, St-Amour was in the jail after The Ottawa Hospital refused to admit him when he went there threatening suicide. Coroner’s inquests are expected to be called into both of the suicides, as is the case with any death that doesn’t involve natural causes inside a provincial jail. Hussein had been in the jail nearly two years awaiting his trial in relation to a series of sexual assaults. His family believes he killed himself after resisting the ministry’s attempts to transfer him to another jail.
Health care: The Ontario ombudsman’s annual report noted the most frequent complaint about the jail related to health care. The ombudsman’s office said about 60 per cent of the 394 complaints it received about the Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre in the fiscal year ending March 31 were about issues relating to medication and the adequacy or delay in receiving health care at the jail. There were 124 complaints about medication in the past year, according to the ombudsman’s office. That included issues with changing medication, access to medication, incorrect medication or dosage and methadone program problems. That was on top of 112 complaints about the adequacy of, or delay in receiving, health care in the jail.
Michael Wiwczaruk.
Lawsuits: A lawsuit filed by a former inmate shed light on excessive force inside the institution. Michael Wiwczaruk filed a civil suit seeking $700,000 in damages after a beating he allegedly received in May 2014 after he spat at a correctional officer. Wiwczaruk’s lawsuit contained a memo from the jail’s then-superintendent that confirmed his claim of excessive force had been substantiated following an internal investigation. None of the allegations in the lawsuit has been proven in court.
Wiwczaruk’s lawyer, Paul Champ, is also preparing a class-action suit involving more than 400 inmates over the conditions in the jail. Champ said the class-action lawsuit is the result of a decade of “systemic neglect” at the jail.
Leadership shuffle: It’s been a revolving door at the top for the Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services. The year began with Ottawa MPP Yasir Naqvi at the helm, but he was replaced during a June cabinet shuffle by Sault Ste. Marie’s David Orazietti. Orazietti lasted six months before he abruptly announced he was stepping down and leaving politics in December. The file is now temporarily in the hands of Oakville MPP Kevin Flynn, who is also the province’s minister of labour.
Lockdowns: The ministry is notoriously slow at compiling statistics on lockdowns due to staffing shortages. In the first six months of 2016, there had been 73 full and partial lockdowns at the detention centre. Despite increased staffing, the statistics are still on pace to match the record-setting totals in 2015, when the jail was fully or partially locked down a record 147 times due to lack of staff. If there is a silver lining, it’s that the number of full lockdowns of the entire detention centre is on pace to be lower than in 2015. The numbers are still staggering: there had been as few as four lockdowns related to staff shortages as recently as 2012, and there were only 15 in 2013.
Jail tour: For the first time in years, journalists were allowed to tour the Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre. The ministry took reporters through newly painted and scrubbed halls and cellblocks to coincide with an update on its response to the task force recommendations. Journalists were shown the shower cells, segregation areas, outdoor exercise yards, the “pods,” the female unit, the worship centre, the body scanner and the sweat lodge.
Smuggling: The jail added a new body scanner in 2016. As of Dec. 23, there had been 5,300 body scans of inmates entering the jail, but jail staff have yet to seize any contraband. The ministry believed it was a testament to the effectiveness of the machine, which takes a high-definition picture of inmates who stand on a moving platform that passes through a narrow X-ray beam. The ministry said body scanners are being used in conjunction with traditional metal detectors and strip searches.
Labour unrest: Correctional officers were only hours away from walking off the job after bitter contract negotiations dragged on right until the Jan. 7 deadline before the strike was averted. Managers from the corrections ministry and other government departments were brought in to run the jail in the event of a strike. Trailers were set up behind the building for managers to sleep in, and food and furniture was purchased and trucked in. The Ontario government claimed strike preparations were only costing about $8.5 million, but that amount was later revealed to actually be more than $44 million.
aseymour@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/andrew_seymour
查看原文...
Mattresses tossed on the floor of damp segregation shower cells because the jail was too crowded to keep inmates in regular cells.
A pair of suicides by inmates housed in solitary confinement, both after they had been removed from suicide watch.
Another inmate who was found mentally unfit after spending what was later revealed to be nearly two years in segregation while awaiting his trial. The inmate — Mutiur Rehman — eventually had to be hospitalized until he was well enough to plead guilty to manslaughter and sentenced to five-and-a-half years in prison.
There were also complaints about a woeful lack of rehabilitative programming, like Alcoholics and Narcotics Anonymous, because of regular lockdowns that made access to the institution spotty at best for the volunteers who administered the programs.
There were complaints about health care, missed medications and psychiatric services that couldn’t keep up with the needs of a jail population where it was estimated that a quarter of the inmates were mentally ill.
And the jail’s own community advisory board delivered a scathing annual report in March that noted the majority of the recommendations it made a year earlier had been ignored while pointing out that strip searches occur too frequently and that the jail’s food is awful. The board also expressed concerns over the treatment of mentally ill inmates and the use of segregation.
Ontario’s ombudsman noted in his annual report the jail was in the top three for complaints. It was also the only one in the top five most complained about jails that had fewer than a thousand inmates. Its 394 complaints were close to the 455 complaints at the Toronto Detention Centre, which can house up to 1,650 inmates. Ottawa’s jail holds 505.
By the end of 2016, however, there were the first glimpses of real change to a detention centre that had largely been ignored for years.
Yasir Naqvi.
A task force appointed by then-corrections minister Yasir Naqvi to examine the problems with overcrowding inside the detention centre returned with 42 recommendations to fix the jail. The government has pledged to act on all of them. By the end of October, the province said 11 of the recommendations had been met. Another update on the ministry’s progress is expected by the end of January.
Many of the other recommendations are being phased in provincewide. Naqvi, in his new role as attorney general, announced the creation of bail beds and an expansion of the bail supervision program to allow more offenders to be released on bail earlier this month. Ottawa’s program will be expanding to Perth, Pembroke and L’Original and it’s expected there will now be room for more than 200 additional accused people who otherwise might not have qualified for bail.
There was also the promise of new judges, more prosecutors and duty counsel lawyers, including some posted inside detention centres in an effort to speed up efforts by prisoners to seek release and reduce delay in court.
The province has also acted on calls for changes to segregation, altering policy so the number of consecutive days an inmate can spend in segregation for disciplinary reasons has been cut in half from 30 to 15. The ministry also announced a weekly segregation review committee will be created at each jail to conduct case reviews of all inmates in segregation. The loss of all privileges in disciplinary segregation will also be eliminated.
The government also appointed former federal correctional investigator Howard Sapers to lead a provincial review and make recommendations into the use of segregation.
The province announced other changes in December, including the hiring of more health care and recreational staff, along with more correctional officers and managers. The 239 new hires will include 22 nurses, 22 mental health nurses, 22 social workers and eight psychologists along with “segregation managers” at the jails with the highest segregation use. The province also promised to improve their facilities and provide more clinical supports.
Ontario’s ministry of health is also funding more mental health court support workers and the creation of “safe beds” as an alternative to hospital or jail.
Here’s a look back at the past 12 months inside Ottawa’s jail:
Shower cells: The infamous cells are located in the jail’s four wing segregation area. Internal ministry emails revealed that 10 inmates had been housed in the shower cells between November 2015 and the end of March 2016. Eight inmates spent a single night in the cells, while two spent multiple nights. Those 10 inmates were placed in the shower cell despite an internal jail directive saying the segregation cells shouldn’t be used. The ministry chalked their continued use up to “operational realities in the institution.”
One of the jail’s notorious shower cells. The jail stopped using shower cells to house inmates after the Citizen reported about their use.
Stories about the shower cells in the Citizen prompted then-minister Naqvi to permanently end the “appalling” practice and led to the appointment of the task force which would make 42 recommendations for fixing the jail. But their continued use, just days after the minister ordered it to stop, led to the removal of the jail’s superintendent. The province said it had acted on 11 of the easiest-to-fix recommendations, including providing inmates with shower cells and cleaning and fixing up the jail. The next update is expected by Jan. 31, 2017, but many of the report’s recommendations are being established in jails across the province.
Suicides: A pair of inmates — Justin St-Amour, 32, and Yousef Hussein, 27 — took their own lives after being housed in segregation cells in the Innes Road jail. Both used their bed sheets to hang themselves, and both suicides occurred after the inmates had been removed from suicide watch. Their families have demanded answers about what led to the deaths. St-Amour, who was a diagnosed schizophrenic, was frequently on suicide watch when he was in the jail. According to a police report, St-Amour was in the jail after The Ottawa Hospital refused to admit him when he went there threatening suicide. Coroner’s inquests are expected to be called into both of the suicides, as is the case with any death that doesn’t involve natural causes inside a provincial jail. Hussein had been in the jail nearly two years awaiting his trial in relation to a series of sexual assaults. His family believes he killed himself after resisting the ministry’s attempts to transfer him to another jail.
Health care: The Ontario ombudsman’s annual report noted the most frequent complaint about the jail related to health care. The ombudsman’s office said about 60 per cent of the 394 complaints it received about the Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre in the fiscal year ending March 31 were about issues relating to medication and the adequacy or delay in receiving health care at the jail. There were 124 complaints about medication in the past year, according to the ombudsman’s office. That included issues with changing medication, access to medication, incorrect medication or dosage and methadone program problems. That was on top of 112 complaints about the adequacy of, or delay in receiving, health care in the jail.
Michael Wiwczaruk.
Lawsuits: A lawsuit filed by a former inmate shed light on excessive force inside the institution. Michael Wiwczaruk filed a civil suit seeking $700,000 in damages after a beating he allegedly received in May 2014 after he spat at a correctional officer. Wiwczaruk’s lawsuit contained a memo from the jail’s then-superintendent that confirmed his claim of excessive force had been substantiated following an internal investigation. None of the allegations in the lawsuit has been proven in court.
Wiwczaruk’s lawyer, Paul Champ, is also preparing a class-action suit involving more than 400 inmates over the conditions in the jail. Champ said the class-action lawsuit is the result of a decade of “systemic neglect” at the jail.
Leadership shuffle: It’s been a revolving door at the top for the Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services. The year began with Ottawa MPP Yasir Naqvi at the helm, but he was replaced during a June cabinet shuffle by Sault Ste. Marie’s David Orazietti. Orazietti lasted six months before he abruptly announced he was stepping down and leaving politics in December. The file is now temporarily in the hands of Oakville MPP Kevin Flynn, who is also the province’s minister of labour.
Lockdowns: The ministry is notoriously slow at compiling statistics on lockdowns due to staffing shortages. In the first six months of 2016, there had been 73 full and partial lockdowns at the detention centre. Despite increased staffing, the statistics are still on pace to match the record-setting totals in 2015, when the jail was fully or partially locked down a record 147 times due to lack of staff. If there is a silver lining, it’s that the number of full lockdowns of the entire detention centre is on pace to be lower than in 2015. The numbers are still staggering: there had been as few as four lockdowns related to staff shortages as recently as 2012, and there were only 15 in 2013.
Jail tour: For the first time in years, journalists were allowed to tour the Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre. The ministry took reporters through newly painted and scrubbed halls and cellblocks to coincide with an update on its response to the task force recommendations. Journalists were shown the shower cells, segregation areas, outdoor exercise yards, the “pods,” the female unit, the worship centre, the body scanner and the sweat lodge.
Smuggling: The jail added a new body scanner in 2016. As of Dec. 23, there had been 5,300 body scans of inmates entering the jail, but jail staff have yet to seize any contraband. The ministry believed it was a testament to the effectiveness of the machine, which takes a high-definition picture of inmates who stand on a moving platform that passes through a narrow X-ray beam. The ministry said body scanners are being used in conjunction with traditional metal detectors and strip searches.
Labour unrest: Correctional officers were only hours away from walking off the job after bitter contract negotiations dragged on right until the Jan. 7 deadline before the strike was averted. Managers from the corrections ministry and other government departments were brought in to run the jail in the event of a strike. Trailers were set up behind the building for managers to sleep in, and food and furniture was purchased and trucked in. The Ontario government claimed strike preparations were only costing about $8.5 million, but that amount was later revealed to actually be more than $44 million.
aseymour@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/andrew_seymour
查看原文...
