There were 900 lockdowns in Ontario’s provincial jails due to staff shortages last year, a figure that has more than tripled since 2009.The full and partial lockdowns, which can last a day or several days, were triggered by shortages of staff including correctional officers and managers.
There were 259 lockdowns in 2009.
The figures, released by the province under the Access of Information Act, do not relate to lockdowns caused by other factors such as security breaches, transfers of high-risk prisoners, violence or contraband. The Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services’ institutional management unit (IMU) says the only available statistical data for lockdowns pertains to understaffing.
The head of the union representing Ontario’s correctional officers says the skyrocketing number of lockdowns is a troubling trend.
“It affects front-line staff and the offenders we’re tasked with supervising and providing for,” said Monte Vieselmeyer, the corrections division chairman for OPSEU, which represents the province’s jail guards.
The province says the lockdowns occur in correctional institutions across the province because of understaffing caused by workers who’ve called in sick or are vacation and other forms of leave.
“These lockdowns are necessary to ensure the safety and security of both staff and inmates,” said Brent Ross, a spokesman for the Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services. “Every effort is made to maintain the regular schedule of visits, programming and other services and when a lockdown is required, partial or individual unit lockdowns are always preferred to a facility lockdown.”
During these lockdowns, inmates are confined to their cells, often with two or more other prisoners. Typically, they have no access to showers, communal dining areas, fresh air or visits. Programming to help prisoners prepare for release into the general public is also not available.
“It means increased frustration for inmates and for staff,” said Vieselmeyer, who pointed to statistics the province provided to his union that show the number of assaults by inmates on staff ballooned to 524 in 2013 from 324 in 2009. The total number of assaults by inmates on staff, including guards, was 448 in the first six months of last year.
Vieselmeyer couldn’t say how many of the assaults were caused by frustration from lockdowns, but said he believes the protocol raises tensions to levels that can often lead to lashing out by prisoners.
He blamed the staff shortage of jail guards on a hiring freeze the province put in place in late 2010.
During the time the province had frozen hiring, it beefed up aspects of its hiring process such as the manner in which background checks are conducted.
Although the union supports that approach, “we didn’t expect that (new hiring process) to take three and a half-plus years” to implement, Vieselmeyer said.
The province began hiring again last year, but the numbers don’t address the shortfall, as the lockdowns demonstrate, the union says.
There are 3,500 full-time correctional officers in Ontario’s jails and about 800 “fixed-term” officers who have yearly contracts and less protection from termination.
The union believes about 300 additional full-timers and about 500 fixed-term officers are needed to address problems, such as the frequency of lockdowns.
The province says it has hired more than 450 correctional officers since the fall of 2013, and “we will continue to work with our labour partners towards the hiring and training of 300 more new staff.”
Larger facilities such as the Central East Correctional Centre in Lindsay or the Maplehurst correctional centre in Milton, which have more individual units, tend to have more unit lockdowns than facility lockdowns, Ross added.
Central East saw the largest number of lockdowns in 2014: 199.
Chris Butsch, president of the OPSEU local representing correctional officers at Central East, says that pattern has continued this year, adding the numerous lockdowns have at times created havoc.
On several occasions, inmates have launched protests against the lockdowns by refusing to return to their cells on normal days, Butsch says.
“When that happens, guards have to negotiate with (prisoners) to go back in,” Butsch said.
Lockdowns have been a particular problem at the Toronto South Detention Centre, a 1,650-bed facility that is one of the province’s new super jails.
In a letter obtained by the Star in June, inmates at the facility described regular weekend and frequent weekday lockdowns where they were kept in their cells for 24 hours a day, for several days in a row.
“Being incarcerated, we are often forgotten. We are sons, fathers and friends. Hopefully this reaches someone who can help us,” the inmates said in their letter, describing the situation as “unbearable.”
Having two or three people confined in a cell for 24 hours, with one of them sleeping on the floor, is “not a safe situation or conducive to rehabilitation,” said Jacqueline Tasca, a policy analyst with the John Howard Society of Ontario, an organization that works with people who have come into conflict with the law.
Source: thestar.com/
Author: Donovan Vincent
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