Lindsay superjail guards hurt in inmate fight

LINDSAY -- One corrections officer had her nose broken and four others were also hurt as they broke up a fight among inmates at the Lindsay superjail recently - and their union leader says it’s about time the provincial government adopts some policies to make the violence stop.

“This does happen a lot – and it seems to be on the rise,” said Chris Butsch, a correctional officer and union president at the Central East Correctional Centre.

Butsch said a fight broke out among inmates on Saturday and when correctional officers tried to respond they were injured. All five officers were taken to hospital for treatment and released.

But it didn’t end there: Butsch said three days later, an officer received a death threat.

He later tweeted about it, saying that jails are unsafe for workers and that the provincial government needs to step in with some “meaningful policies” to increase safety.

“Does this happen every day at your workplace?” Bustch wrote in a tweet directed at Safety and Correctional Services Marie-France Lalonde.

There was no reply to the tweet, and Butsch said he wasn’t surprised.

“They stay silent on it,” he said in an interview.

Although Lalonde wasn’t available for interview this week, she sent The Examiner a lengthy written statement in response to the incident and to Butsch’s call for increased safety for correctional workers.

She starts by thanking staff at Central East Correctional Centre for their bravery in stepping in when the fracas broke out.

She also writes that she’s got a role to play in keeping jails safe for all.

“I take my responsibility to improve the conditions in our system and to ensure the safety of our staff and inmates very seriously,” she wrote. “Violence within Ontario correctional facilities is unacceptable.”

Inmates who get violent could lose privileges in jail, Lalonde wrote, or they forfeit any earned remission. And if they assault a correctional officer or fellow inmate, she noted, police are called.

But Butsch says that there’s not only violence but also chronic understaffing in jails and the province needs to fix it.

Never mind that the government has hired 1,600 part-timers lately, as Lalonde points out in her statement – to Butsch, it’s not enough.

He would prefer to have Lalonde and other officials come to jails, speak with workers and overhaul their staffing model – something they haven’t done in nearly 15 years, in spite of increasingly heavy workloads.

For instance, Butsch said, segregation units have expanded in the Lindsay jail with no new officers to supervise.

Sometimes it means there aren’t enough workers to ensure inmates can shower or get outside into the prison yard according to schedule, Butsch said.

Meanwhile other workers in the jail – discharge planners and social workers, for instance – are increasingly busy preparing for impending probation or parole hearings.

That’s because the government created a new policy whereby every inmate gets a hearing – not just those who applied for one. Nobody’s been hired to cover the heavier workload, he said.

“They just keep dumping work on a department that can’t keep up,” Butsch said.

Yet Lalonde writes that the provincial government is taking steps to “redefine” the jail system, making jails safer for both workers and inmates.

The province committed in 2016 to hiring 2,000 new workers in three years, for example, and since March they’ve already hired 1,600.

Lalonde writes that her ministry has worked closely with front-line workers to come up with plans to increase safety.

“As I have travelled across the province, visiting our correctional institutions, I have met with correctional officers to discuss the condition of our facilities, and the safety and security of staff and inmates,” she wrote.

“I have never shied away from these conversations and I welcome the engagement.”