Inmates riot at Dartmouth jail

Dozens of rioting prisoners smashed windows and set fires at a Nova Scotia jail Wednesday, causing extensive damage to the property, a provincial Justice Department spokeswoman said.

Sherri Aikenhead told reporters at a press conference that the incident at the Central Nova Scotia Correctional Facility in Dartmouth started around 1:30 p.m. AT when 59 inmates in the north unit refused to return to their cells for lockdown.

The inmates smashed windows, Aikenhead said, and some used shards of glass as weapons. Fires were set in a garbage can and in a bookshelf.

"It is considered a major disturbance," Aikenhead said when asked to describe the incident.

One inmate was treated for smoke inhalation but there were no serious injuries, she said.

Inmates return to cells before sundown

Corrections officials brought in extra staff to quell the riot. Most of the inmates were back in their cells by 6:15 p.m., with the last holdouts giving up before sundown.

Earlier, Carla Grant, another Justice Department spokeswoman, told reporters it was unclear whether the riot was related to a lockdown at the facility Tuesday night and subsequent searches for contraband. Prisoners were supposed to remain in lockdown until Thursday morning.

Aikenhead said she could not speculate on a cause.

"All it takes is one inmate to get something like this started," she said.

Halifax Regional Police were called to the jail around 3:30 p.m. Officers were standing by outside the facility, along with firefighters and paramedics. Paul Maynard, spokesman for Emergency Health Services, said the ambulance service was asked at one point to have 10 vehicles ready and to prepare for 20 to 30 patients.

Violence in November

Wednesday's incident is not the first at the facility.

In November, inmates in two rooms refused to comply with a lockdown, then proceeded to trash one of the rooms and assault another inmate, according to an account provided by an unnamed guard who wrote an email to the provincial NDP to shed light on what happened. The unnamed guard said 13 guards had to be called in from home and from other parts of the facility to deal with the incident.

The unnamed guard complained that there were too few guards on at the time of the November incident.

The Central Nova Scotia Correctional Facility, which opened in 2001 and houses the majority of adult offenders in the province, is designed to hold 224 male and 48 female offenders in single cells, but prisoners are often placed two to a cell because of overcrowding.

Before Wednesday's disturbance, Justice Department officials said they are working to fill a number of guard positions at the prison.