Naqvi ends shower cells
Flawed bail system is causing overcrowding in jail, critics charge
Correctional Services Minister Yasir Naqvi says he has put an end to the “absolutely appalling” practice of squeezing inmates into shower cells at the Innes Road jail, but correctional officers say he’s still facing a “full-blown crisis” when it comes to overcrowding.
On Saturday, Naqvi announced he was banning the use of segregation unit showers to house inmates, following a Citizen story.
A day later, advocates said the overcrowding problem is the re- sult of putting the wrong people behind bars, and demanded an overhaul to the bail system and an end to locking up people with mental illness or developmental disabilities.
“I found out recently that, in very exceptional circumstances, as a last resort, the secure shower stalls in the segregation units were used,” Naqvi said in an interview Sunday, the day after issuing a directive he said would permanently put an end to the “unacceptable” practice.
Ontario’s jails don’t stash inmates in damp, smelly showers, and they’re going to stop doing it immediately, says Community Safety and Correctional Services Minister Yasir Naqvi.
The Ottawa Centre MPP made a humiliating climbdown on Saturday after having called both Ontario’s top public-service union leader and his ministry’s New Democratic critic liars over claims that the Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre made inmates sleep in shower rooms because there wasn’t space for them in proper cells.
Ontario Public Service Employ- ees Union president Warren (Smokey) Thomas emerged from a tour of the jail on Innes Road in February appalled by the practice. Naqvi responded by saying directly that Thomas was speaking falsely. Then NDP community-safety critic Jennifer French took a tour of her own and reported the same thing. They both said they’d seen the shower-room beds with their own eyes.
Inmates talk about having to towel off the floors as best they can before laying mattresses down.
Friday, following an account from such an inmate to Postmedia’s Gary Dimmock, Naqvi’s ministry admitted that, yes, it does happen.
On Saturday came Naqvi’s own climbdown.
“I want to be absolutely clear that, as we have said, the inmate general shower areas have never been and will never be used to house inmates,” Naqvi said in a written statement (pleading a fine and meaningless distinction that he hadn’t before). “The ministry recently informed my office, however, that two shower cells in the segregation unit have been used as a last resort, where overcapacity issues made it necessary in the circumstances, to ensure the security of the institution.”
Naqvi is against this: “This practice is appalling, completely unacceptable, and I have ordered its immediate and permanent end. This practice should never have occurred and I want to be clear that it will never happen again. The ministry has issued a directive which immediately and permanently prohibits any institution from engaging in this practice.”
Of course, nobody thought making inmates sleep in showers was a great idea in the first place: it was a desperation move. Where they’ll sleep now isn’t clear. Maybe in fridges, or the yard.
This is important: Most of the people at the Innes Road jail haven’t been convicted. They’re awaiting trial. Some are awaiting a bail hearing. Others are unable to make bail or are so down and out that a judge worries they don’t have enough ties to keep them here if they’re let out. Some are mentally ill.
But well over half of them are not legally guilty of a thing. They’re “on remand” while the courts decide what to do with them.
The segregation units at the jail are used for punishment, but also to protect vulnerable inmates and to confine people with psychiatric problems — illnesses, that is — that make them difficult to manage in the general population. These are the people sleeping on the floors of showers on Naqvi’s watch.
Ontario’s jails shouldn’t be resort hotels, but nor should they be dungeons. Civilized people do not keep prisoners this way.
Repairing the province’s jails so that people don’t come out of them more dangerous and broken than they were going in has been Naqvi’s explicitly assigned job since June 2014. Yes, it takes time to get the hang of such a complicated problem, but he is not new at this. And still he was ignorant of one of the most appalling practices his jailers have been using, to the point of scorning people who talked about it.
How did the minister find himself denying something that was provably true? His spokesperson Clare Graham was silent on that on Saturday morning.
Naqvi’s been making some progress. He and the government averted a strike by corrections officers early this year and have been hiring and training more guards. Now he says there’ll be a high-level ministry task force dealing specifically with the Ottawa jail’s overcrowding. Maybe it’s just too small. Maybe it’s housing inmates who’d be better kept elsewhere or who could even safely be released. Sorting that out isn’t as easy as it might sound at first.
First, unfortunately, the boss will have to glue his credibility back together.