Ontario youth detention centres at overcapacity, creating concerns as another is set to close
CBC
More than three years after shutting down roughly half of its youth detention centres, Ontario is seeing overcrowding at its remaining publicly run facilities.
In 2021, the province closed 26 centres.
Today, there are 20 privately run transfer payment centres and five public direct-operated facilities.
Last week, publicly run youth jails in Sudbury, Simcoe and Brampton were 100 per cent full or over capacity, according to CBC News sources. For June 6, on average, all five facilities averaged 101 per cent capacity. The other two, which were under capacity during the same time frame, are in Sault Ste. Marie and Thunder Bay.
The centres house youth charged or incarcerated in violent crimes like murder, armed robbery and burglary.
Michael Fallon, co-chair of Ontario's Corrections Ministry employee relations committee (Corrections MERC), said he hasn't seen numbers consistently this high since before the province closed the centres during the pandemic — a move he says was justified at the time.
"They've been coming back into custody for these serious crimes," said Fallon, who's with Local 290 of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU).
"We've filled up our beds — we've had to add more beds to our facilities and we haven't added any facilities."
According to Fallon, Ontario's plan so far has been to open up more beds.
"They added a unit to existing facilities. However, they didn't staff units with more staff. What they did was they added 13 beds at the Simcoe building, and they added 16 beds at the Brampton building, and they did not allow for any more staffing."
As announced last year, Sudbury's youth detention centre is set to close in the spring of 2025 and be revamped into a jail for adult females.
Staff are being offered jobs at the adult facility, but Fallon is unsure how the youth inmates will be dispersed across the system with overcrowding already proving to be an obstacle.
"They haven't shared what their plan is with us."
He said their staffing is already at "bare-bones minimum," and some people are working anywhere from 12- to 16-hour shifts to meet demand.
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