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| John L. Hill |
Waterloo Regional Police responded to reports of a break-and-enter at the Grand Valley Institution for Women on Homer Watson Boulevard, and an arrest was made at approximately 8:30 p.m. on Nov. 2. The police investigation found that the man climbed the fence and gained access to the yard, and allegedly assaulted two people once he was inside the facility.
A Dec. 21 Toronto Star report quotes Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) spokesperson Michael Shrider as saying that CSC has launched a review of the incident “to gather all necessary information and to better position the sites in case of unexpected incidents like this in future.” The front-page Star article was prompted by the filing of statements of claim seeking a total of $3.2 million in damages for CSC’s failure to take reasonable steps to prevent, detect and intercept the intruder from entering the penitentiary grounds, and for its failure to ensure the safety of the inmates confined there. Jeffrey Hartman, a prison law expert with the Toronto firm Lockyer, Zaduk and Zeeh, filed the lawsuits.
The Star report states the intrusion began at 6:30 p.m. The intruder scaled a six-foot barbed wire fence separating the areas designated as minimum and medium security, leaving four empty beer cans behind him. The man gave chase to one of the women who sought refuge by running to a housing unit and barricading its doorway. However, one of the women accidentally depressed an accessibility button that kept the door open. Two women were struck by the intruder several times in the melee.
Some women attempted to signal distress by calling the control centre for help, but reportedly the centre hung up on them. When three guards arrived, the intruder approached them. It wasn’t until the women reported that the man was a trespasser that the guards took action by tackling the man to the ground and holding him until police arrived.
The facility was placed on lockdown from Nov. 4 to Nov. 7. This was not viewed by prison authorities as a hardship imposed on innocent victims; instead, CSC defined it as a “temporary movement restriction” to conduct a “nonroutine search.” It was necessitated to ensure the safety of inmates and staff — a case of locking the stable door after the horse has bolted.
In addition, the fence was monitored by stationing a vehicle on the compound where the fence was scaled. “To prevent unauthorized entry, the institution maintains perimeter surveillance and access control systems, supported by trained staff and technology to detect and deter potential breaches,” the CSC spokesperson said. However, the lawsuit alleges that the staff member conducting this surveillance has been observed sleeping inside the vehicle. The Star noted that its contact with the Union of Correctional Officers raised concerns about safe working conditions and criticized management’s lack of accountability.
It was an unusual event, and the news reports read like stories of the fox entering the henhouse. What happened at Grand Valley Institution points up a serious flaw in ensuring inmate safety in our prisons. Aside from being an unusual situation, it will likely take a successful tort-based lawsuit to bring the necessary focus on inmate safety home to CSC management.
Corrections authorities generally owe a duty of care to inmates to keep them safe from harm that is reasonably foreseeable in custody. If a security breach or intruder entry was foreseeable and CSC failed to take reasonable precautions, that failure could be considered negligent. In an article written in the Queen’s Law Journal, Adelina Iftene, Lynne Hanson and Allan Manson argue that Canadian courts are reluctant to impose duties on public actors, particularly when the conduct in question walks the line between operational and policy-oriented action, because imposing a duty of care about conditions of confinement would require the courts to make orders with heavy funding implications. In short, judicial review of administrative action would likely be unsuccessful. Courts would be unlikely to legislate through litigation. Nonetheless, if an action in tort law can be initiated to claim damages for breaches of prisoners’ rights, the result may be “behaviour modification” for correctional managers, improved enforcement of prisoners’ entitlements and better internal prison conditions.
John L. Hill practised and taught prison law until his retirement. He holds a JD from Queen’s and an LLM in constitutional law from Osgoode Hall. His most recent book, Acts of Darkness (Durvile & UpRoute Books), was released July 1. Hill is also the author of Pine Box Parole: Terry Fitzsimmons and the Quest to End Solitary Confinement (Durvile & UpRoute Books) and The Rest of the (True Crime) Story (AOS Publishing). Contact him at johnlornehill@hotmail.com.
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