A group of legal and prisoner rights groups are demanding independent oversight of Ontario jails following a recent report that found a near doubling of inmate deaths between 2020 and 2021.
In an open letter, they call on Solicitor General Michael Kerzner to “take immediate action to form an independent provincial body dedicated to overseeing jails and quickly raising alarms, similar to the federal correctional investigator.”
The report from the transparency project Tracking (In)Justice found that deaths in jails doubled from 23 reported in 2020 to 41 reported in 2021, and that 28 deaths took place in the first ten months of 2022. This information is not made public in any real-time or accessible way, and the researchers say there is limited data available on the cause of the spike in deaths.
“Why is it that an institution that holds significant power over the lives of individuals does not have the checks and balances of other institutions or other parts of the justice system?” said Yusuf Faqiri, who began advocating for prison reform after his brother Soleiman Faqiri died in the Central East Correctional Centre after being restrained by correctional officers during a mental health crisis.
In Ontario, jail oversight falls to the provincial Ombudsman which tracks and investigates complaints — such as getting inmates access to medication — and has conducted investigations in the use of force and segregation, as well as how recommendations are being implemented. The Ontario Coroner’s office has also conducted inquests that examine drug overdose deaths in custody, and the Ontario Human Rights Commission has investigated the use of segregation for people with mental health needs.
A corrections reform adviser was hired in 2016 by the then-Liberal government and brought attention to health care, violence and rehabilitative programming, but his role was not renewed by the Ford government in 2018. Community advisory boards overseeing some jails were also disbanded.
Federal prisons, on the other hand, are overseen by the Office of the Correctional Investigator, which publishes reports and tracks issues such as the over-incarceration of Indigenous men and women, racial discrimination, solitary confinement, sexual violence and COVID-19.
Faqiri said he respects the work the Ombudsman’s office does but the correctional system far requires more scrutiny and transparency.
“People are dying and we don’t know how they died,” he said.
The letter, which is signed by the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, the Black Legal Action Centre, the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies and more than forty other groups, says the oversight body must include families of people who have died in jail and people with lived experience of incarceration.
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