THUNDER BAY - Conditions at the district jail now has the attention of the Ontario Ombudsman.
The office of the Ontario Ombudsman announced Thursday via Twitter that a team will assess the situation of prisoner Adam Capay.
“I can confirm that we are sending two members of our investigations team to Thunder Bay to find about more about the situation,” Ashley Bursey, manager of communications with the Ontario Ombudsman, states in an email. “As you may know, our work is confidential and we don't comment on individual cases.”
The case of Adam Capay, the 23-year-old inmate who has spent the last four years in segregation, put a spotlight on conditions at the Thunder Bay District Jail and the use of segregation in Ontario prisons.
Michael Lundy, district jail correctional officer and OPSEU local 737 president, said news of the ombudsman inspection is good, but he remains skeptical it will result in actual change.
“The frustrating part of the ombudsman coming is, at the end of the day when he talks to all the staff, it’s going to be the same thing: you need a new jail, you need new infrastructure, you need staffing levels to go up,” Lundy said.
In the last year, the district jail has experienced a riot, a death in custody, and an escape.
The case of Capay, who remains in segregation because, according to jail staff, there is no other option, is the most recent example of inadequate staffing and deteriorating infrastructure.
“There’s been inquest reports, city council has been screaming about it, the union has been yelling about it, the riot brought light to it, all this stuff and nothing is being done,” Lundy added.
“It’s great that the ombudsman is coming, but what it’s going to do? It’s just going to result in another report with a bunch of recommendations that in my view are going to be ignored.”
Lundy has lobbied the province for the construction of a new jail. City council will join that push and table a motion next week recommending the city request Ontario approve funding for a new facility.
“We want to make sure that the government agenda deals with the facility,” said Joe Virdiramo, Westfort Ward councillor and chair of the city's intergovernmental committee.
“We feel having council pass the resolution gives it more weight and more emphasis.”
Virdiramo added a new correctional facility is something city council has supported for a long time.
“Even though people are incarcerated they need to be living in conditions that are suitable,” Virdiramo said.
“That jail is for people who can’t make bail, who haven’t come to trial yet, basically in all due respect, they are innocent people until proven guilty and they are not living in conditions where other people live in jails that are much better.”
The issue put the Liberal-led provincial government again under fire again at Queen’s Park Thursday.
“After my visit, I challenged the premier to visit the Thunder Bay Jail,” said Progressive Conservative leader Patrick Brown said.
“She has failed to do so because the premier (Kathleen Wynne) didn’t want to admit that there could be third-world conditions in Ontario corrections."
Wynne said she is concerned, adding that there needs to be a transformation.
Wynne pointed to an announcement last week about segregation in Ontario correctional facilities, which included reducing the number of consevutive days an inmate can spend in segregation from 30 to 15.
Lundy called that a knee-jerk reaction, saying the government bit off more than it can chew.
“It’s so broad. It’s such a big problem," he said. "If you put an inmate in a range and he can’t survive, there’s nowhere else to put him, it’s segregation, that’s it.”
Minister of Community Safety and Correctional Services, David Orazietti, added during question period at Queen’s Park that with respect to Thunder Bay, improvements have been made.
“We’ve added 26 new correctional officers since 2013," he said, "we are moving to improve infrastructure, window replacements, a full body scanner, changes to unit doors, sally port doors put on nine living units, closed circuit television.”
Lundy admits the addition of a body scanner is important, but with no additional staff hired it will just slow things down at the jail.
As for the new officers, Lundy said in an earlier interview the officers being hired are backfill who only fill in for the full-time staff.
“We still only have 43 full-time positions,” he said. “We’ve had 43 positions for the last 30 years.”
Lundy added he doesn't know what it’s going to take for real action when it comes to addressing the district jail's issues.
“Every time something happens I think this is it ... You think that it can’t get worse than this, but I don’t know. It’s such a huge crisis. I don’t even know what it takes to fix it anymore.”
