Drone drops in correctional facilities a safety concern for workers

One correctional officer in Ontario was slashed in the back of the head with a razor blade weapon. A guard was beaten by a group of inmates elsewhere.

These two “major assaults”, along with the surging number of violent incidents that have hurt correctional officers have led to the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers and its members to protest outside the regional headquarters of the Correctional Service of Canada in Abbotsford, B.C.

“We need policy put in place to support the front-line correction officers in providing the care, custody and control of inmates while holding them accountable for their actions,” said John Randle, a regional president with the union in the Pacific region. 

“That’s what we’re here for, we’re here to correct their behaviour. We’re here to eventually release these inmates into society as law-abiding citizens. That’s the mandate we took. That’s the oath I swore when I was a correction officer and we’re not able to do that right now.”

One problem that’s leading to these violent attacks are drone drops in correctional faciltiiress across Canada, he said.

Violent incidents against guards have “exploded” across the country, he said.

“It’s an attack on all fronts,” Randle said, according to a report from The Canadian Press. “What we’re dealing with now is the drone drops, which have increased the ability for the inmates to get contraband into the institution. We’ve got weapons coming in that we’ve never seen before.”

Drones have enabled inmates to access commercial knives, brass knuckles and large packages of drugs like fentanyl and methamphetamines, leading to inmate overdoses and violence over control of the contraband market behind prison walls, according to the report.

“It’s kind of become the perfect storm,” Randle said. 

At least one prison in B.C. commonly has six or seven drone sightings a night on a typical weekend, he said.

The good thing is technology to combat drone drops into prisons exists. These include radar systems to detect drones that enter prison airspace, or technology to disable them or take control of them to combat drug and weapon drops.

However, these types of technology hasn’t been implemented in prisons, Randle said in The Canadian Press report published on CityNews.

Surging violence against correctional officers

Federal prisons in Canada recorded more than 9,100 violent incidents over fiscal 2022 to 2023, up by more than 45 per cent increase from the same period the year before, according to the union.

Women’s prisons saw a near 69 per cent increase in incidents while the prison population grew by less than six per cent over that time.

Another problem for correctional officers is that they can no longer use “disciplinary segregation” to temporarily remove a prisoner from a unit if they are violent against other inmates or guards, said Ranle in the report.

“So, now what we’re facing is if an inmate stabs an inmate or an inmate assaults a correction officer, we used to be able to take them out and take them into display segregation,” Randle said. “And we’re struggling with getting criminal charges pressed against these inmates because we’re being told that either Crown or police or somebody says it’s not in the interest of the public to go after an inmate who’s in federal prison.”

“It’s created this situation where now inmates know that there’s not much a correction officer can do to correct the behaviour,” he said.