Jail guards need help: report

Ontario prison review finds correctional officers don’t feel safe at work

Ontario won’t get a handle on violence in its 25 adult jails until it provides better training for guards to de-escalate and defuse hostile situations, the province’s corrections watchdog says in a stinging new report obtained by the Star.

That training is “sorely lacking,” wrote Howard Sapers, who was appointed by the previous Liberal government in 2016 to help fix a problemplagued penal system, in a 182page report that has not yet been released by Premier Doug Ford’s government.

Sapers makes 42 recommendations, which also include: setting up separate minimum-, medium- and maximum-security cells within each provincial jail; giving inmates written notice and explanations for their security risk classification; and implementing more “meaningful” programs and activities aimed at rehabilitation.

He called on the government to “accelerate” changes to training. His review, which included a detailed look at the troubled Toronto South Detention Centre, found just over half of the province’s correctional officers “did not feel safe working at their institution.”

“Furthermore, 66 per cent of frontline officers indicated that they worried about being assaulted by an inmate at least once a week,” Sapers added in the report, his last before his $330,000-a-year term ends on Dec. 31.

The office of Corrections Minister Sylvia Jones said the report will be posted on the ministry’s website after it is translated into French.

“I am reviewing Mr. Sapers’ recommendations and continuing my conversations with frontline corrections officers to determine an appropriate action plan,” Jones said in a statement Friday.

“Our frontline correctional employees do a difficult job under very challenging conditions,” she added, repeating a “promise to give them the additional tools and supports they need to keep themselves and those in our custody safe.”

Jones touted the graduation of 53 new correctional officers Friday from an eight-week training course.

But Sapers noted in his report that the graduations — continu- ing the previous Liberal government’s 2016 plan to hire 2,000 new officers over three years — do not address the need to modernize the curriculum in the Correctional Officer Training and Assessment (COTA) program.

“Although the ministry has acknowledged that the COTA program is outdated and in need of revision, no changes have been implemented,” Sapers added. “At present, de-escalation and communication skills are sorely lacking in the COTA curriculum.”

He pressed the government to provide better training for guards in human rights, correctional law, and “self-care and resiliency for dealing with workplace stress.”

“Training must be applicable to day-to-day situations that correctional officers face in their work environments when dealing with inmates.”