Ottawa jail among worst for violence

Ontario's jails are in the midst of a surge of cellblock violence that suggests the province's overcrowded correctional system is simmering with tension.

Figures obtained under freedom of information reveal there were about 3,000 reported prisoner-on-prisoner assaults in 2012-13 - or eight attacks a day — up almost one-third from the 2,300 attacks five years earlier.

Six of the province's 29 jails open last year each had more than 200 inmate-on-inmate attacks. The most violent were facilities in Ottawa, Milton, Lindsay, Hamilton, London and Penetanguishene. And the number of times guards used physical force against inmates has almost doubled, reaching some 1,500 incidents from 800 in 2008-09.

The rise in violence comes alongside growing overcrowding in Ontario's jails, almost half of which were above capacity last year - another recent high that's seen three inmates locked in cells meant for two.

Glenn Johnson spent eight months in the Elgin-Middlesex Detention Centre in London in 2012 while awaiting trial on robbery charges.

After suffering a concussion from a slip in the shower, he said he was "punched out" by inmates demanding his medication - resulting in a second concussion.

Once, he was stabbed in the back with a pencil, and another time, he alleges, he was handcuffed and peppersprayed by guards for laughing.

He said he can't get away from his stint behind bars.

"There's days when I can't even walk out of my house because I suffer from paranoia," said Johnson, who is on medication for the condition. "And I didn't go in that way. I came out that way."

Johnson is now a representative plaintiff in a proposed class-action lawsuit that his lawyer estimates could ultimately include thousands of current and former inmates at the jail.

Correctional Services Ministry spokesman Andrew Morrison said the government is always trying to improve prisoner management.

"Despite our best efforts, violence does occur within a secure correctional facility," Morrison said in an email.

Guards, too, point to overcrowding along with a lack of inmate programming as triggers for violence. They also complain about understaffing and poor instruction on handling the estimated one-in-five inmates who have mental health issues.

"We're basically a referee in a hockey game. Except they're not holding sticks, they're holding sharp-edged weapons," said Dan Sidsworth, a guard at the Maplehurst Correctional Complex in Milton - the most violent jail in the province.

According to the statistics, inmate-on-staff incidents, which include uttered threats, jumped to 239 incidents in 2012-13 from 169 five years before.

Sidsworth, who is chairman of the corrections division of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, accused the government of playing down the numbers by recording a single attack against multiple guards as only one incident.

An average of two guards are assaulted daily, he said.

Sidsworth said the government's move to equip staff with handcuffs and pepper foam, along with ending a hiring freeze, should reduce the violence.

After a scathing report last year from the Ontario ombudsman on incidents of excessive use of force and a "code of silence" on reporting them, the Correctional Services Ministry announced a crackdown meant to instil a "cultural shift" in jails.

The ministry promised training, random audits and a "zero-tolerance" policy for threatening or violent behaviour on both sides of the cell bars.

Ministry statistics for the first 10 months of fiscal 2013-14 show about 2,500 inmate-on-inmate attacks, 1,200 use-of-force incidents and about 260 inmate-on-staff incidents.

While the overall number of inmates has dropped in recent years, more prisoners are being held on remand - awaiting trial or bail. Nearly two-thirds of all inmates now fall into this category.

Jacqueline Tasca, a policy analyst with the John Howard Society of Ontario, said the overcrowding and violence raise deep questions about the justice system.

"The vast majority of people in our system are going to get out," Tasca said. "Do we want prisoners to come out of jail in a better place than when they went in?" Tasca said a "direct-supervision model" at two huge new jails in Windsor and Toronto, letting guards more easily monitor and interact with prisoners, could reduce violence.

Morrison said there are no plans to expand direct supervision to other facilities.

Source

Ontario Jails are Ontario Concentration Camps for fathers with a very large number of fabricated charges and based on fabricated evidence laid by the most corrupt criminals in society.

The worst criminals in society are not in jail, now and are unlikely to be in the future while we have a corrupt lead Crown Attorney Vikii Blair who probably has resulted in hundreds of man years of jails sentences without a conviction. See Kangaroo Justice dot org for more info.

The Worst Criminals in Ottawa who put people in jail but have total immunity from criminal and or civil prosecution are:

#1 Ottawa Police Detective Peter Van Der Zander who fabricates evidence to NOT charge the most violent females.

#2. The Children's Aid Society of Ottawa is a cess pool of fabrication of evidence whose management intimidate staff into fabricating evidence. The "managers" who do this will never be charged but they pull the strings on some of the worst personalities who do brazenly and openly fabricate evidence.

This organization is referred to by local Ottawa Lawyers as "The Gestapo" and while receive some $80 Million dollars a year that is spent on some 300 children in care per year. That means they make around $266,000 per child per year. They also cost Ontario Billions of dollars in other costs which makes them not just a criminal organization but a Government Funded collection of the worst sort of psychopaths who rule and operate by terrorizing the community, especially fathers who are victims of domestic violence.

#2 (a) Child Protection Worker Phillip aka Phil HILTZ-LAFORGE, this low life fabricates evidence to remove children from loving non-violent parents to place them with the most dangerous perpetrators of violence.

#2 (b) Ottawa lawyer Marguerite Isobel Lewis personally fabricates evidence and not a single judge in Ottawa has the courage to say a word regarding her habitual obstruction of justice.
This pitiful example of humanity, generates such a number of complaints that you can hear multiple conversations by lawyers talking about her as you walk just along one passageway. As a result, Marguerite Isobel Lewis has become perhaps the most reviled person in the Ottawa Legal Community.

The Children's Aid Society of Ottawa is known to direct police to lay charges and stay charges for their own purposes. The Ottawa Police take directions and instructions from this corrupt Criminal organization without question.

These same corrupt organizations result in large numbers of innocent fathers being sent to the Ontario Concentration Camps where they tell the most violent of prisoners stories to get their victims beaten and or murdered.

For all this we can thank our dead beat judges who fail to deal with the cess pool of criminals masquerading as police officers like Det. Peter Van Der Zander or lawyers like Marguerite Lewis or Tracey Engelking.

www.OttawaMensCentre.com

Just remember the "most vile predators" are often wearing a Police uniform where they abuse victims of abuse and protect real criminals from any prosecution.

Ontario spends billions of dollars on funding Ontario's 54 private unaccountable criminal organizations called Ontario's Children's Aid Societies" who habitually engage in criminal offenses with impunity.

www.OttawaMensCentre.com/wanted.htm