Transfers ease overcrowding crisis at Thunder Bay Jail

The province has stepped in to temporarily ease the overcrowding crisis at the Thunder Bay Jail.

Some eligible inmates at the jail — classified as a maximum-security remand centre — have been moved to the minimum-security Thunder Bay Correctional Centre on Highway 61, said Brad Slobodian, corrections officer at the jail and president of OPSEU Local 737, which represents staff there.

"We contacted the [Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services] regional director," Slobodian said. "We pleaded with them to start getting some transfers out of here."

Normally, Slobodian said, someone would need to be sentenced to a term of two years, less a day, prior to being sent to the correctional centre.

But there are other factors involved in someone being classified as eligible to serve their sentence at the correctional centre, he said.

"If their charges aren't serious, if they've been there before and they followed the program and they followed the rules," he said. "There's a lot of policy involved."

"I believe they circumvented that to a degree ... to get these inmates out to the correctional centre for the interim," Slobodian said. 

As of Tuesday, Slobodian said, the jail had about 178 inmates, which is down from the weekend's total of more than 190. The current count, however, is still well above capacity at the jail, which has about 140 beds.

"But today, it could be up again to 190," he said. "It's not going to stop."

"The police are doing a great job arresting a lot of these people ... but we can't house that many people," Slobodian said. "This issue is not going to go away."

Things are also being complicated by the number of gang-affiliated individuals that are in custody at the jail, Slobodian said.

"There are a lot of rivalries there for turf," he said. "We have to keep those inmates separate, in different living units, and we have to be careful when we escort them around the facility, too, that they don't come in contact with each other."

"In that small space, it's trying to do that," Slobodian said. "We do it, but it's difficult."

Thunder Bay police said Wednesday there are currently about a dozen gangs operating in Thunder Bay.