Six correctional officers injured in two separate assaults in past month
Jail staff union bemoans limits on use of segregation
It’s “open season” on jail guards since the province curbed the use of segregation as punishment for inmates, says the head of the union representing staff at the Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre.
“You have violent people. The only way they’re going to be not violent is if the deterrent is strong enough,” said Scott Forde, interim president of Local 411 of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union.
Six correctional officers at the Innes Road jail were injured in two separate assaults within a few days of each other in the past month. The most serious occurred on May 25 when two officers came for an inmate who was to be transferred out of the institution. The incident occurred during Muslim inmates’ Friday prayers.
“They weighed the pros and cons of interrupting prayer, but at the end of the day we have a job to do,” Forde said. “They tapped him on the shoulder and said, ‘We gotta go or you’re not going to get your family visit.’ ”
At that point, several inmates approached one of the guards from behind and began to “sucker punch” him in the back of the head, Forde said. The second officer intervened and was also attacked, Forde said, leaving him bleeding from the nose and eyes, and with bone chips in his elbow that required surgery. Both men remain off work.
The entire jail was placed on lockdown after the attack, but the lockdown ended the next morning. Guards also searched for a homemade shank that was seen in the possession of one of the inmates, but the weapon wasn’t found. The institution’s response to the assault was too lenient and its investigation only cursory, Forde said.
“They (the inmates) know that if something goes down, there’s a lockup and an investigation. When they got out the next morning, the message that was sent was, ‘It’s open season on staff.’
“It embarrasses me to say that, but that’s the message that was sent and it was clearly received by the offenders.”
OPSEU’s health and safety committee has been allowed to see a surveillance camera video of the assaults to see what can be done to improve safety in the jail, Forde said. Some changes have been made, but can’t be disclosed because they deal with security issues.
The second assault occurred just a few days later when a group of inmates began fighting in the jail’s reception area. Guards intervened and four were injured, though they weren’t targeted by the inmates, Forde said. Three remain off work.
The use of segregation in Ontario jails was condemned in an independent review released last year that urged “profound changes” to the policy. As a result, inmates can’t be sent to segregation for more than 15 days at a time and for no more than 60 days in a calendar year without the permission of the minister of correctional services.
That means one of the only ways to punish an inmate is to charge him criminally, which, if he’s convicted, would mean perhaps an extra 30 or 60 days added to his sentence, Forde said.
“They know they’re not going to get segregation. They know they ’re not going to do hard time. If you’re looking at a life sentence in the penitentiary, it’s nothing to get a 30- or 60-day sentence for attacking a CO. The only thing it’s going to get you is a ‘pen rep’ — they’ll have on their ‘resumé’ that they attacked a staff member.”
There were 30 incidents of inmate on staff violence at the OCDC in 2015, 41 in 2016 and 46 in the first six months of 2017, according to the most recent statistics available from the Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services.
Brent Ross, a ministry spokesman, said police are immediately called to investigate any case of threats or assaults against jail staff. Segregation remains as a disciplinary measure for serious misconduct, he said.
“The ministry has zero tolerance for violence against correctional staff or inmates. The ministry is committed to ensuring the safety and security of staff that work in our correctional system.”