Ontario jails to get full-body scanners in a bid to reduce contraband

Cellphones, crystal meth, cocaine, marijuana, knives, a gun, cigarettes, lighters, shanks, shivs and pills. It’s a laundry list of banned items inmates have tried to smuggle into Ontario jails, using their body cavities – or creating new ones.

“Sometimes, we’ll see a guy with lots of long scabs on their legs. Sometimes they’ve been hurt- but sometimes, they’ve cut themselves and packed in some pills or razors because they know they’re going to jail. They stuff it in and it scabs over. And then they’ve got it inside,” a 20-year corrections veteran, who wished to remain anonymous, explained.

“We once caught a guy with 17 Kinder eggs shoved up him, filled with narcotics and crystal meth.”

Correctional officers from across the province have similar stories to tell when it comes to the lengths inmates go to get contraband inside Ontario jails.

Here are just a few others:

• “We were doing a unit search a few years ago. The metal detector was alerting us to a specific part of an inmate mattress. We cut it open, found a full length motorcycle chain.” – Toronto East Detention Centre.
• “There was this inmate who had a knife . We knew it was there, so we put him in a dry cell (where correctional officers control the toilet and water flow) and waited. Turns out he was packing two full, ceramic knives.” – Elgin Middlesex Detention Centre.
• “A roofing axe. On an inmate brought into Toronto West Detention Centre by Toronto Police Services. And he tried to use it on the first CO he saw after he put his hands on the wall for an initial frisk search, prior to the full search.” – Toronto West Detention Centre.

But soon inmates will have to find more creative ways to get contraband into Ontario jails.

Minister of Correctional Services Yasir Naqvi announced on Tuesday that every correctional institution across the province will have a full body scanner by 2018.

“These are x-ray type of machines with different configuration with how much you can see and how much you can capture,” Naqvi explained.

The SecurPass Whole Body X-Ray Security Imaging system will detect ceramic knives, which are gaining in popularity in Ontario jails, as well as the drugs and pills which are rarely detected now.

The scanners will be installed at all 26 adult correctional facilities in the province over two years at a cost of $9.5 million.

“Obviously, the more drugs and alcohol that are smuggled in, the higher chances of an offender overdosing,” Tammy Carson, Correctional Officer Provincial Health and Safety chair, said. “Every inmate when they get into the institution, they get a strip search, but that only (catches) so much of the contraband that is in there.”

Carson said it isn’t like in the movies where correctional officers put on gloves and conduct cavity searches. Although she adds that those happen in very rare circumstances but only with a physician present.

Currently, inmates are strip searched, go through a metal detector, and a metal detector-like chair.

However, those only pick up metal and sometimes they don’t work.

“What we’ve seen in the Hamilton-Wentworth Detention Centre, we’ve had approximately six offenders die from overdoses,” Monte Vieselmayer, OPSEU’s Corrections chair explained. “You have a death, one death is too many. But having this scanner is a potential to stop that contraband.”

The move to implement the new scanners follows a six-month pilot project at the Toronto South Detention Centre, which Naqvi says resulted in a reduction in contraband and fewer incidents with weapons

“About 86 or so inmates were detected to have ceramic knife or something, or contraband that would prevent them from entering into the [place],” Naqvi said.

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Inmates who are found with contraband on admission face disciplinary measures, including potential criminal charges. Those suspected of packing drugs or weapons in a body cavity will be placed in a dry cell, where guards control the water flow, until correctional officers can be certain there is no threat-or the contraband is expelled.

Eleven jails will be getting the new scanners over the next few months, including Toronto-East Detention Centre, Central East Correctional Centre, Maplehurst Correctional Centre, Hamilton and London’s Elgin-Middlesex Detention Centre.

The remaining jails will have them installed by 2018. At which point Ontario will become the first Canadian jurisdiction to install full-body scanners in all its adult correctional facilities.

With files from The Canadian Press