Of the 29 provincial jails in Ontario, 14 were overcrowded in 2012. With an average prison population at 98.5 per cent capacity, some jails were chronically overcrowded: Toronto Don Jail was at 117 per cent capacity last year, with five inmates per four beds. It has been over capacity for the last six years.
Ontario’s prison overpopulation has been a problem for the better part of a decade. CBC reports that for five of the last six years, the system has been at or near its total capacity. In 2012, the 9,020-bed jail system held a daily average of 8,806 inmates.
What’s even worse is that many of these inmates may not even be guilty: nearly two thirds of Ontario inmates are being held in remand or waiting for their trial.
A former inmate named Shawn, who was held at the Elgin-Middlesex prison for 18 months while waiting for his trial, spoke to CBC about the conditions that arise from overcrowded jails.
He says overcrowding forced him to flop down on a narrow stretch of floor between two occupied beds in a cramped seven-by-two metre cell. Lying on a thin, worn mattress he had to rest his head next to the shared toilet.
“If you’re sleeping people step on you, then if they’re urinating they splash on you,” said Shawn, 35.
The jump in pretrial inmates — as late as 1996, only one third of Ontario prisoners were awaiting trial — will more seriously affect the poor and disadvantaged than the wealthy criminal suspects who can afford to pay bail. This means our jails are filling up with potentially innocent people whose only definite crime is being poor.
What’s worse, the number of prisoners is unlikely to go down anytime soon. Ontario is actually expecting its “daily prisoner count” to go up by 1,500 or more inmates in the next two years, thanks to the Harper government’s tough-on-crime agenda and stricter sentencing laws.
The problem is exacerbated by the fact that several jails are in the process of closing down while two shiny new prions are being constructed. One is a “major correctional complex” in the southwestern part of the province, while the other is a
“superjail” — a name ominously reminiscent of American supermax prisons — in Toronto’s west end.
Once the two new jails are opened there will be a net gain of 280 beds, but while the jails are being built and others are preparing to close, there is fluctuation and uncertainty, all of which directly impacts inmates’ quality of life.
While they wait for beds and proper facilities — maybe! — inmates who, again, may not even be guilty, are sometimes sleeping three or even five to a two-person cell, waiting months or years to see a trial.
As Shawn told the CBC, “jail’s supposed to be punishment but we’re still human.” They’re already separated from their families and friends and the outside world; do they really need to sleep three to a seven-by-two concrete room, some of them on the floor, for it to count?
The comfort and safety of inmates rarely warrants much public concern, but it should. Especially if you value the idea that prisons should be a place for rehabilitating criminals so that they can live peacefully and contribute to society, it is in everyone’s best interests to ensure that while behind bars prisoners can still, you know, sleep without getting another person’s piss on them.
[CBC] [image via Doug/Flickr]