Full-body scanners to be installed in provincial jails
Inmates in Ontario jails are about to experience an invasion of the body scanners as the devices are used to detect more weapons, drugs and other contraband to prevent more violence and overdose deaths.
Correctional Services Minister Yasir Naqvi said all 26 adult jails will get the airport-style machines, which can spot ceramic knives, Kinder Eggs full of pills or marijuana and other items metal scanners can’t see.
“It’s a piece of equipment that we really need,” said corrections officer Tammy Carson, a health and safety representative with the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU).
Scanners will be installed over the next two years as “an important first line of defence” that correctional service officers have been seeking, Naqvi added.
“The status quo in our correctional system simply must not continue,” added the minister, whose Liberal government has been under fire for overcrowding and poor conditions in jails along with a shortage of guards he is trying to reverse with a hiring spree. Another correctional officer with OPSEU called the scanners, which have operated successfully in a pilot project at the Toronto South Detention Centre, a “game-changer.”
“It’s going to make it much safer for staff and inmates,” said Monte Vieselmeyer, who is based at Toronto South.
During the six-month trial run there, officers completed 16,427 scans on inmates and 86 were found to have ceramic knife blades, various pills and marijuana.
In future, knowing that they will face scans, many prisoners will no longer try to smuggle contraband into jails either inside or outside their bodies knowing they will likely be caught and sent to solitary, said Vieselmeyer.
“There is still a crisis in corrections. This is one of the building blocks” to fixing the problems, he added.
Staff working at the jails, or lawyers and visitors stopping in to see them, will not be subject to scans, but inmates who have gone out to court or seen visitors will have to go through the machines.
It’s still expected some contraband will get through, Vieselmeyer told reporters.
“There’s always going to be some method they’re going to try.”
Up to 29 scanners will be bought with a budget of $9.5 million, which aims to cover installation and maintenance for the next 10 years, Naqvi said.
Jails now use hand-held and walkthrough metal scanners, along with metal-detecting “body-orifice-security-scanner” chairs that inmates must sit on, which can detect contraband, along with strip searches and sniffer dogs.
The largest jails, including Toronto East, Central North, Elgin-Middlesex, Ottawa-Carleton, Maplehurst and Hamilton-Wentworth, will get the scanners by this time next year and smaller facilities, such as Brantford and Stratford, will get installations the following year.