Workers get assaulted, commit suicide, finds report
"We've also lost a number of staff who have died by suicide over the last year," said one correctional officer in Ontario.
"You've got climbing inmate counts and then you've got staffing shortages, it's just a recipe for disaster,” said Chad Oldfield, a corrections spokesman for the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, in a report from The Canadian Press.
Overall, Ontario jails are overcrowded, and this leads to trouble for correctional officers, according to the report.
Correctional officers are increasingly assaulted, Oldfield said, and operational stress injuries and post-traumatic stress for the guards is on the rise.
Between 2016 and 2022, Correctional officers are third among occupations with approved work-related stress injury claims registered with the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board, just behind police officers and paremdics, according tio the report., citing data from WSIB.
Just many people are in provincial jails in Ontario?
As of Sept. 30, 2023, there was an average of 8,889 people in provincial jails, far more than the 7,848-person capacity. Overall, the jails were operating at 113 per cent capacity at that time.
For example, Maplehurst Correction Complex in Milton, Ont., was operating at 134 per cent capacity. It had an average inmate population of 1,188 but official capacity for 887, noted The Canadian Press in the report posted on CBC.
Elgin-Middlesex Detention Centre in London, Ont., was operating at 133 per cent capacity, with an average 471 inmates while having operational capacity for 353.
And South West Detention Centre in Windsor, Ont., was operating at 129 per cent capacity, with 337 inmates but space for only 262 people.
Navalpreet Kaur Dhillon, in his Master’s Thesis at the California State University (CSU), noted: “Overcrowding in prisons increase violence against correctional staff as well as among inmates. It can be inferred that staff assaults and batteries and inmate-on-inmate assaults and batteries happen more frequently in overcrowded prisons because there is a shortage of staffing in prisons.”
Solicitor General Michael Kerzner, who is responsible for Ontario's jail system, did not answer repeated questions about jail population numbers or the province's plans to deal with overcrowded institutions, according to The Canadian Press.
Instead, he talked about hiring 1,000 more correctional officers and touring jails.
