Overcrowding, lockdowns inside this Windsor-area jail are so persistent, it's leading to reduced sentences

Overcrowding and frequent lockdowns due to short staffing: These are some of the conditions at the South West Detention Centre that led to a lighter sentence of a Windsor man charged with gun trafficking. 

In March, Lawrence Davis was sentenced to seven years in jail after he was found guilty on gun-related charges. Davis was charged in December 2021 after he got into an argument with a man in a vehicle at a parking lot near Tecumseh Road East and Forest Glade Drive. 

The heated argument turned into a gunfight — one man died, while Davis was shot in the shoulder and treated in hospital.  

Without being able to prove whether Davis acted out of self-defence, first degree murder and attempted murder charges were dismissed.

But in the publicly available decision related to Davis's probation breaches and gun-related charges, the judge says he considered the conditions the man faced during his pre-sentence custody at the South West Detention Centre (SWDC).

Those conditions included multiple lockdowns and sleeping three people to a two-person cell. 

Courts are able to take these factors into consideration under what is known as Duncan's Credit — the credit is not a defined number of days or months, but rather a mitigating factor. 

While it isn't anything new, some experts say its use points to persistent problems in Ontario's correctional system. 

Lawyer says 'harsh' conditions are common in area jail 

Patricia Brown, Davis's lawyer, told CBC News that she always tries to inform the court of the poor conditions people face in jails. And since COVID-19, she says she's been detailing these conditions more often. 

"I'm raising the concerns before justices so they can realize that the accused person, although they were not yet convicted or sentenced or found guilty ... [was] in harsh conditions," she said. 

In Davis's case, she said there were three people in his two-person cell for 523 of the 803 days he was at SWDC. 

According to the decision, Davis was assigned the floor mattress on "some of these days," but it notes that the arrangements on paper aren't always what actually take place. 

Davis also experienced a total of 109 lockdowns — on top of the usual lockdowns in place daily from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. and from 12 p.m. to 1 p.m. 

Seventy-seven of the lockdowns he experienced were due to "insufficient staffing," the decision notes.

"When you think of yourself and your space is crowded, you're dealing with someone that may not be [cleaning] themself properly ... you're frustrated, they're frustrated, they're in a tight quarter ... all of those are factors that you consider can create a frustrating atmosphere that can be potentially dangerous," said Brown. 

"It can cause inmates to act out on each other, it makes it unsafe for even employees." 

She stresses that this sort of environment is especially difficult for people who have addiction or mental health issues. 

Jail operating over and above capacity 

Overcrowding and frequent lockdowns are common problems, says Katrina Digiacinto, president of Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU) Local 135, which represents staff at the facility.

Though the jail is meant to hold 315 people, Digiacinto says right now they have closer to 400 inmates. 

Crowding tends to elevate tensions, leading to more violence toward staff and other inmates, she said. 

But unless the employer approves it, Digiacinto says they can't just bring in more staff. 

"If the employer was more willing to increase the staff per shift, we would experience fewer lockdowns," she said.

Right now, she says they could use an extra 20 staff members to handle a full day and night shift. 

In an email Wednesday morning, a spokesperson for Ontario's ministry of the solicitor general said it "will continue to work to build capacity within Ontario's correctional facilities to keep our communities safe." 

It said that the government has made "record investments to modernize corrections, enhance safety and improve the system across the board." It noted that it's dedicated more than $500 million to expand facilities across the province, including creating new ones and adding more beds. 

It didn't say whether any of this funding has been committed to the South West Detention Centre. 

As for changes to the judicial system, the spokesperson said "decisions regarding sentencing and pre-trial custody are made by the courts." 

Howard Sapers, who led a two-year independent review on Ontario's correctional system in 2016, says the provincial governments could create procedural guidance that emphasizes non-custody options or puts priority on using pre-trial custody for accused that are high risk. 

'Rethink' entire system: corrections reform expert

Longstanding issues are driving all of these problems, says Sapers.

The review he led, resulted in three reports that included 167 recommendations. 

Sapers says despite the commitment to make improvements, "things haven't gotten any better, in fact they've deteriorated since I did that work."

When asked whether these conditions violate someone's charter rights, Sapers said "absolutely."

But he said these issues are allowed to persist because even though there's "lots of policies, lots of laws" there is no "absolute prohibition." 

When a person is charged and a judge declines to release them on bail, "that person is then dropped off at the door of a local provincial jail, and the jail doesn't really have the ability to say, 'we're simply too crowded,'" Sapers said.  

While he says there's a lot that needs to change to fix these problems, he says it's not about building more jails or hiring more correctional officers.

"It's rethinking how it is we use pretrial custody, what the purpose of a correctional centre should be," he said, adding these changes would need to involve everyone from police all the way to the mental healthcare system. 

For Brown, the lawyer in Windsor, she agrees. Speaking generally — it's not about bigger jails, but rather making changes to the bail system, she says. 

As for Davis, he was sentenced to seven years. After subtracting the time he earned from pretrial custody, he has about two years and seven months remaining.