Maplehurst has Ontario’s worst jail outbreak

Advocates want clarity about when prisoners, officers to be vaccinated

As Maplehurst Correctional Complex continues to battle the worst COVID-19 jail outbreak so far in the province, with 130 active cases, advocates are calling for clarity from Ontario around when prisoners and correctional officers will be vaccinated.

There are 88 inmate and 42 staff cases at the Milton jail, which is currently over capacity and has been running at 96 per cent capacity on average in the past six months, according to a spokesperson for the minister of the solicitor general Monday.

That exceeds the April outbreak at the Ontario Correctional Institute in Brampton, which had 89 inmate and more than 20 staff cases; the December outbreaks at the Toronto South Detention Centre, which had 77 inmate cases; and the Joyceville Penitentiary in Kingston, which had 80 inmates test positive.

Two jails in Thunder Bay also remain in active outbreak. The Thunder Bay Correctional Complex has 43 inmate and five staff cases, while the Thunder Bay District Jail has nine inmate and 14 staff cases. The district jail has been operating over capacity, and has transferred inmates to the Toronto South Detention Centre to free up space.

According to the Criminalization and Punishment Education Project, there have now been more than 5,000 cases of COVID-19 in jails and prisons across Canada.

The series of jail and prison outbreaks in Ontario’s second wave has prompted prisoners’ rights advocates and union leaders to call for more to be done to reduce jail overcrowding and improve safety.

“Prison populations are going up and so are COVID infections,” said Justin Piché, an associate professor of criminology at the University of Ottawa. “Things have gotten worse since December 1st and the government is not putting in place enough measures to try to bring these numbers back down and expose less people to COVID-19. … We are still in the pandemic.”

In the early months of the pandemic, Ontario jails dropped to 70 per cent of their pre-pandemic population, achieved through a combination of fewer arrests, more releases pending trial, suspension of weekend sentences, parole and a small number of early releases. Legal groups have said it remains unclear exactly how the reduction in numbers occurred. Since April, only 43 inmates were released early through a new program designed for low-risk offenders near the end of their sentences.

In recent months, the jail population has been increasing. The inmate population is now 7,090, which is 85 per cent of what it was pre-pandemic.

“The ministry continues to work with its justice partners to reduce the number of individuals coming into custody across Ontario,” ministry spokesperson Andrew Morrison said.” These decisions are based on a number of factors to ensure community safety remains paramount,” Morrison said, noting it is the courts who determine bail and sentencing.

Meanwhile, Ontario has not yet specified when correctional officers and inmates can expect to be vaccinated. In response to questions about whether they would be part of the Phase 2 vaccine rollout expected to start in March, which includes “individuals living and working high-risk congregate settings,” Morrison said “steps are underway to identify the subpopulations within each Phase 2 category, including essential workers,” which would be followed by a plan laying out the order.

Phase 2 of the rollout also includes older adults starting with those over 80, and individuals with high-risk chronic conditions. “I am hopeful that (the province) will take public health advice and do what they are legally to do, in terms of duty of care,” Piché said. “You can’t just expose (prisoners and staff) to these higher rates of COVID transmission, which are higher behind bars than in the general population. It’s unconscionable to do that.”