FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE April 29, 2002
Provincial jail open - but criminals stayed home
BRANTFORD - The Ontario Public Service Employees Union is asking the Ministry of Correctional Services to explain why inmates serving weekend sentences stayed home last weekend while cells remained empty on three fully-staffed units at the Burtch Correctional Centre, near Brantford.
At an Ontario Labour Relations Board hearing on April 17, senior corrections bureaucrat Gary Commeford agreed to assign correctional officers to the three unused units, commencing April 26, for the duration of the OPSEU strike. However, the Tory government is now allowing those supervised beds to remain empty while the
inmates, who should be occupying those beds, stay at home. That, said OPSEU Corrections Division chair Barry Scanlon, is a travesty.
“Why is this so-called ‘tough on crime’ government staffing a jail and then not allowing inmates into that jail to serve their sentences?” asks Scanlon. “It’s costing taxpayers a minimum of $8,000 a weekend to staff those units. It’s whacko. It’s a complete disgrace.”
Scanlon says that more than 150 criminals convicted of crimes such as drunk driving, assault, fraud and drug trafficking spent last weekend in the comfort of their own homes while trained correctional officers sat and stared at empty cells.
Less than 40 of the usual 200 inmates serving weekend sentences were in Burtch Correctional Centre last weekend.
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FOR FURTHER INFORMATION:
Barry Scanlon 416/788-9190
