Bordeaux jail infections up sixfold in three weeks
The number of inmates or detainees who have tested positive for the coronavirus at the Bordeaux jail has increased sixfold in just three weeks.
Eighty-nine of the men behind bars at the jail on Gouin Blvd. have contracted the virus, according to information made available from the provincial government Friday afternoon. A first set of tests done inside the jail during the last week of April detected 14 cases. All were recorded among inmates in Sector E, but subsequent testing has turned up cases in Sector C, a large part of the jail that normally holds 180 inmates. At the end of last week, 35 inmates had tested positive for the virus.
Claude Laberge, 46, left the Bordeaux jail on May 8, after he was sentenced at the Montreal courthouse to a one-day prison term on top of the time he spent behind bars since he was arrested in March 2019 in a breaking-and-entering case. He was not tested inside Bordeaux, despite being in Sector C, where the virus had spread quickly.
After his wife picked him up at the jail, they had themselves tested and decided to self-isolate in a hotel, because they have a baby they left to be cared for by relatives.
Both tested positive for the virus, and they have been spending $100 a day for the hotel.
“It was hell (at Bordeaux). They were under lockdown 24 hours a day. They were left in their cells with nothing to do,” said Laberge’s spouse, who asked that her name not be published. “No one from the jail called to say he would be released. Claude’s lawyer called me and I had to rush out to get him. I’m sure I have COVID-19 because of Bordeaux.”
When it was suggested that the couple acted responsibly by self-isolating before they knew they had the virus, she replied: “Yes, more responsibly than the guards (at Bordeaux) for sure.”
According to the government’s statistics, 344 — nearly 40 per cent — of Bordeaux’s inmates or detainees have been tested for the virus so far. According to the same statistics, authorities have managed to reduce the number of inmates at the jail from 933 at the end of last week to 874 as of Friday.
The jail, officially named the Montreal Detention Centre, is by far the hardest hit among Quebec’s 17 detention centres. Only three other inmates have tested positive in the other provincial jails, including one case at the Rivière-des-prairies Detention
Centre, the only other jail on the island of Montreal.
The partner of a 41-year-old man who recently completed a 23-month sentence for operating a marijuana grow operation, and is detained because he is charged with another cannabis-related offence, said he called her Thursday with news that he had tested positive for the virus.
She said that before he became part of a group of inmates placed under a 24-hour lockdown in April, he worked inside the detention centre and his tasks included emptying garbage cans. “When the coronavirus became a concern, he would ask for gloves while he worked and he was always refused,” said the woman, who asked that her name not be published. “When he called me to tell me he tested positive, he was very frustrated because the preventive resources aren’t in place.”
According to a release issued by the Anti-carceral Group, which defends prisoners’ rights, inmates in Sector E were placed under a 24-hour lockdown after the first inmate tested positive on April 24.
Last week, Public Security Minister Geneviève Guilbault announced that, in an effort to increase the possibility of social distancing in the province’s jails, some inmates could be granted early medical release if they met certain criteria, including pregnant women and offenders serving time for non-violent crimes.
A spokesperson for the minister informed the Montreal Gazette on Friday that 29 of those releases have been granted so far.