Citizens to have voice in running jail

Critics fear new volunteer advisory board will lack real power to make changes

The Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre is to be among the first jails in the province to have a new community advisory board that the Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services says will help to increase transparency and accountability.

The ministry said the volunteer board will have access to the jail, its inmates and staff seven days a week and 24 hours a day, will provide advice to the detention centre’s superintendent during monthly meetings and contribute findings to an annual report to the minister.

The board, typically made up of six to eight members, is expected to be appointed in the fall.

But critics of the new advisory board said they fear it will be powerless to effect any change in the overcrowded and much-maligned regional detention centre.

“It looks like a tiger with no teeth to me,” said defence lawyer Mark Ertel.

“There is no mechanism for review of any decision that the superintendent makes, and there is no requirement here that the superintendent follow the directions or advice of the people who will be looking into the facility,” said Ertel.

Ertel questioned the amount of access the advisory board would actually have.

“I don’t believe they will really have 24-hour access to the jail because they regularly lock down the jail to prevent people from coming inside and that is when some of the worst abuses happen, when the jail is on lockdown,” Ertel said.

Byronie Baxter, executive director of the Elizabeth Fry Society and an especially outspoken critic of the jail since a pregnant prisoner gave birth in a cell last September, also expressed concern.

“What I would welcome is some kind of independent public oversight committee,” said Baxter. “If Corrections is serious about having public advice into the corrections model, you need an independent, arms-length, oversight committee that has some power.”

Ministry spokesman Brent Ross wrote in an email that the advisory boards will have no oversight responsibilities, and won’t be allowed into the jail during lockdowns or emergency situations for safety and security reasons.

“A Community Advisory Board is not an oversight committee. Their role is to focus on local institutional issues such as offender work programs, volunteer programs, First Nation programming and ideas to improve community relations operations and to connect correctional facilities. When the Board does bring advice forward, the Ministry will consider it,” wrote Ross.

Don Wadel, executive director of the John Howard Society, said he believed a community advisory committee was a “terrific idea” — if the ministry does it properly.

That starts with an informed group of volunteers “with the courage to speak up and speak truth,” he said.

Wadel also believes the media and public should have access to the committee’s work.

“Right now it’s been so closed off,” Wadel said of the jail.

James Foord, president of the Defence Counsel Association of Ottawa, said it was laudable the committee may review programming available to inmates while they do “dead time” in the jail waiting for trial or sentencing.

However, the committee needs to be able to do more if they want to improve transparency and accountability about what happens behind bars.

“In terms of its suggested focus of accountability and transparency, it would be hard to see how that is the result of something that doesn’t have that as its mandate,” said Foord.

‘In terms of its suggested focus of accountability and transparency, it would be hard to see how that is the result of something that doesn’t have that as its mandate.’

JAMES FOORD President, Defence Counsel Association of Ottawa