INMATES ARE ‘SITTING DUCKS’

Advocates call for release of non-violent offenders to reduce potential virus spread

Jails pose pandemic threat: doctors

Ottawa physicians and health professionals warning of the “potentially disastrous” effect of a COVID-19 outbreak in the prison system are amplifying calls on the province to depopulate jails of non-violent offenders, equating inmates to “sitting ducks” in a pandemic.

Jails and prisons pose a “unique threat” to the health-care system as “outbreak hot spots” and threaten to overwhelm a health-care system already under an enormous pandemic “stress test,” according to Dr. Melanie Strike, a forensic psychiatrist in Ottawa who treats people in Ontario jails, and Dr. Neil De Laplante, a resident physician who has researched the vulnerability of correctional institutions to pandemics.

“Jails are sitting ducks for respiratory infections because the inmates can’t move around, don’t have hand sanitizer or masks and share cells. They are staffed by a large team that works rotating shifts and will inevitably bring COVID-19 into the jail at some point because someone can transmit it for several days before they start to show any symptoms,” said Strike.

“Inmates as a whole are in worse physical health than others of the same age, with high smoking rates that make complications from a new respiratory infection especially worrisome.”

There are no cases of COVID-19 at the Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre, according to the Ministry of the Solicitor General.

Ten inmates have been tested for the virus provincewide with no positive results, said ministry spokesman Brent Ross, and five of those test results remain pending.

Kim Beaudin, national vice chief of the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples, urged each province “on humanitarian grounds and out of concern for public health and correctional staff, to immediately release all detainees currently held on remand for non-violent offences and inmates six months short of their release date.”

In a letter sent to the premier and attorney general of each province, and addressed to federal counterparts and the prime minister, Beaudin cited cases of coronavirus that have “already been detected in multiple institutions in multiple provinces,” and warned that overcrowding conditions “threaten to create a breeding ground for the virus.”

“The lives of detainees and the safety of the general public are endangered by unnecessarily keeping anyone in confined living spaces where they cannot avoid infection,” Beaudin wrote.

Ontario’s solicitor general has already implemented several regulatory measures to combat the spread of the virus in correctional facilities, extending temporary absence permits and allowing longer absences for intermittent inmates, and suspending all personal visits to jails.

“I’ve been trying to get a hold of all my clients via teleconference at the jail and every one of them has expressed grave concern with the situation there,” said defence lawyer Leo Russomanno, a director with the Defence Counsel Association of Ottawa.

“Their movements are being controlled by (the guards) and it’s impossible to self-isolate when you’re in an overcrowded prison population.

“So even if as a group the prison population is isolated, once an infection hits the jail then it becomes a real problem. And I think all of the inmates there are justifiably very concerned about that situation.”

Russomanno said as many as 70 per cent of the province’s jail population is made of those in remand, those awaiting trial who have not been granted bail.

“These are people who are presumed innocent, many who are awaiting trial and some who may be found not guilty and will have served time,” he said.

“That’s offensive on a regular day, but now we’re talking about a global pandemic and a vulnerable population.”

Those serving sentences of less than two years for non-violent offences make up another significant segment of the population that should be assessed for early release, advocates say.

“Releasing all of the non-violent inmates now, before they get infected, avoids a huge burden for the whole health-care system,” said De Laplante. “The smaller remaining inmate population could be monitored more closely for symptoms and safely quarantined within the facility.”

The physicians cite one troubling case in a South Korean psychiatric hospital where the COVID -19 outbreak infected 98 per cent of the population “in a matter of days.”

A similar outbreak in a provincial jail like OCDC — which currently has 406 inmates and a 621bed capacity — would overburden the prison system and overwhelm local hospitals and health-care providers.

“Each inmate who goes to the hospital needs to be accompanied by two corrections officers and they don’t have enough staff for that, even before their staff start getting sick or quarantined,” said Strike.

The physicians noted that some of Ontario’s largest provincial jails are in small towns like Lindsay and Penetanguishene, “which have even less capacity to handle a big outbreak.”