Health care of inmates needs overhaul: report

Ontario findings urge cash boost as Tories to cut

They arrive in the throes of a mental-health crisis, typically accompanied by two jail guards.

And quite often, those Ontario inmates are refused a bed by outside hospitals, either because of stigma or a mistaken belief they’ll get the help they need behind bars, an internal government report indicates.

The surprising phenomenon is just one example of the substandard health care prisoners in the province receive, despite suffering from sky-high rates of physical and mental ailments, says the document, obtained under freedom of information legislation.

As Ontario’s Conservative government proposes a $36-million cut to the overall corrections budget, the review by a panel of outside experts urges spending milli ons more to bring about “profound” changes in inmate health care.

Doing so would lessen the strain that sick prisoners impose on the outside medical and criminal-justice systems, and take advantage of a “unique opportunity” to treat marginalized members of society, says the panel.

“In Ontario, we seem to be reaching a tipping point,” says the 57-page document. “We can further reduce the burden on our already stretched hospital capacity by providing proper care in custody … (and) avoid costly future interactions with police, courts and the correctional system.”

The report’s specific, det ai led recommendations were censored out before the government released it to the John Howard Society of Ontario. But unredacted parts laud decisions in Alberta and other provinces to put jail health care under health ministries, rather than corrections departments.

Though the review was commissioned by the previous Liberal government, the current administration is talking to members of the expert group about the issue, said Marion Ringuette, press secretary to Solicitor General Sylvia Jones. The minister recently visited the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health to that end, she said.

“We are working on a correctional health care strategy, in consultation with the (Health Ministry) and other health system partners that will improve the quality of care within correctional in