Forum to focus on problemplagued jail

A pair of prisoner support groups is planning a public forum to discuss potential solutions to the problems plaguing Ottawa’s troubled jail.

Mothers Offering Mutual Support (MOMS) and members of the Criminalization and Punishment Education Project are organizing the forum on May 12 at Ottawa City Hall to allow the community to weigh in on the situation at the Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre as a provincial government-led task force works on addressing conditions at the jail on Innes Road.

MOMS group’s spokeswoman, Irene Mathias, is a member of the task force appointed by Community Safety and Correctional Services Minister and Ottawa MPP Yasir Naqvi to come up with solutions at the detention centre.

“For years, advocates of justice reform have been speaking out about conditions at OCDC, yet the situation at Ottawa’s jail continues to disgrace our city,” the two groups said in a release announcing the forum.

“The situation at OCDC is no longer a crisis. It is a disaster in the making,” said Mathias. “This is not the time to play a blame game. It is time to fix our jail.”

The forum comes as a spotlight has been focused on conditions inside the Ottawa jail over the past month. An inmate described to Postmedia spending days locked up in a mouldy and damp shower cell which led to Naqvi banning the practice. But just days after the minister’s order, Postmedia revealed the practice continued at the detention centre. Less than two days later, the jail’s superintendent was dismissed from her job.

Another inmate, Ronald Marion, died after going into cardiac arrest while in the jail’s health care unit, while an accused murderer who spent 18 months in solitary confinement was deemed unfit to stand trial. Yet another prisoner, Yousef Hussein, hanged himself with a bed sheet while housed in solitary confinement.

And on Tuesday, inmate Stephane Therrien testified in court that he was missing doses of his prescription drugs and denied the use of crutches for a painful chronic nerve condition.

Last year was a record year for full and partial lockdowns at the jail with 147, and the Ontario ombudsman’s office reported that health care complaints made up more than 60 per cent of the 391 complaints they received in the last fiscal year about the jail. More than 60 per cent of the jail’s inmates are also in the detention centre on remand while awaiting trial, which has led to calls for reform of the bail system.

The forum will be held from 6 to 8 p.m. on May 12 at Jean Pigott Place at Ottawa City Hall.