Episode 4: On the Move

Shift – Episode 4: On the Move

Joyceville Institution is located 20 kilometers northeast of Kingston, Ontario.

It is a minimum-security site, the regional assessment unit, as well as the regional temporary detention unit, with a capacity of just over 750 inmates.

With it being both an assessment and a temporary detention unit, it means there is a lot of movement happening and Correctional Officer Roger Levac is in charge of overseeing all that movement. We spend the morning with Roger during his shift.

Roger
Correctional Officer

I'm Roger. I'm a Correctional Officer, CX2, at Joyceville Institution. I've been a Correctional Officer for over 15 years. It's a very interesting job. It's a job that keeps you on your toes. Not many other people can have the experiences that you have behind these walls.

Shift INTRO

ON THE MOVE

So, Joyceville is a JU, which is an assessment unit. By that, it means we're taking all the inmates in from the provincial jails as they begin their federal sentence.

ASSESSMENT UNIT

When offenders get handed a federal sentence, they’re usually already in a provincial jail, where they’ve been awaiting sentencing and a transfer to the federal institution. The Joyceville assessment unit is where that handover happens in Ontario. Federal offenders jailed in the provincial system arrive from buses and flights from across Ontario, to the Joyceville Assessment Unit for processing. Once processed, they become federal inmates, and await the decision on which federal institution they’ll be sent to serve their sentence. While some may stay at Joyceville, most will be sent to other institutions across the province, and across the country.

When they first arrive here from provincial, they are brought in, they are strip searched. At that point they are fingerprinted. They have their photos taken. As they're here, they're being assessed to decide what institutions, what security level they go to after at that point, whether it be minimum, medium, or maximum security. The jail is then assessing everything from their healthcare needs, their program needs, their mental health needs, and of course their security needs, and then deciding on where they go from there. So, they can be here for a brief amount of time, or sometimes a bit longer depending on what they need to solve by the time they get here.

It's easier for guys that have been in the federal system more than once, but most of them are first time when they come through here. And with sometimes potentially up to 50 new guys a week, it's a lot of information. It's a lot to do. So, staff have to get as much as they can, which just helps us in the long run. We had already received, I think, 45 to 48. That might be the first. There's probably still 30 to 40 of them. They may still down here, I guess.

So, all these guys will come in and just kind of work their way through. They'll see their correctional manager, and they'll just keep going through. They'll normally go into there first - if there's too many guys, if not, they'll just start the process of fingerprinting them, seeing healthcare, getting all their information. Here is all where the nurses, as you can see, they're all set up along there, different nurses and stuff. And they're meeting with each one of these guys. This closest table to us are parole officers. They're meeting with the guys. And mental health back there as well. And this is a weekly occurrence here. That's what they would wear, the orange. And we take that. We take everything from them that's orange when they get here, because that's the provincial colours, and then they get our stuff. Once they're here, all they would have is what's in that bag. That's pretty much all their belongings in there. And they have them all sized out, as you can see for guys, obviously down the road, if they need something else, we can switch it over. But initially when they get here, that's what they get.

So, because most of these guys would hold up to 10, which would be five buses, but most of the time you're getting maybe four to five from a jail. So, we could get eight, nine jails in one day. So, these guys, so they would have all, that's our sally port where you guys came through. They would have all got processed. We know they're coming on these days. They find out who's coming in. They call down to A&D. They say Ottawa's here, they have five, just to give them a heads up, and they just start rolling in.

And then this is, as you see all their stuff, because they'll take all that back with them. So, as they're here, they'll get stripped that they'll get our clothing. They'll also get their cuffs back and all that. And they'll take all that back with them.

Our staff will tell them when they're ready for them, once we have room to put them in and start processing them and they’ll just come in. So, when they came in here, they're going to that room to be stripped as they came in. So that's where the staff is taking them right now.

Pictures are being taken there of the inmates coming through. Fingerprints done right up here.

So that's all the initial, once they get here, then it depends on where they're at, whether they have to go have them wait for a bit. Normally, they'll go in, sit for a bit, and then wait, and then they'll just start the process. They have to see every department before we say, okay, you can go to your range now. They also are allowed one phone call. So that's what they would be doing here at that point. Because now it might, it could take possibly up to a week until, you know, they can make another call, because it takes that long to get all this done with this many guys coming through. A lot of information giving, as soon as they get off the buses, when they come in, we have staff there from every department, giving them as much information as possible, both verbally and written. Now, when you get that information, of course, a lot of it flies over your head because there's so much to take, and it's nerve-wracking for them, especially if it's the first time in a federal institution.

So, we rely on, then once they get to the ranges, the officers play a huge role in telling them how the day's going with that. Each range has range reps, which then help us out with keeping, explaining all this stuff. We post a lot of stuff on the ranges written to try to help guys out, but a lot of it is really, they just learn by day to day and following the other guys that do it. Since we run a fairly tight routine in here, and every day's the same, it normally doesn't take too long to get a grasp on what we're doing, what, since it should, it falls at the same time basically every day. This is a very busy department. Staff down here is really good, and you have to be, because they have a lot. And as I said, this is also flight week. So they're also, while doing all this, and shipping guys out to local prisons like Collins Bay and Millhaven, they are also flying guys out across the country. So it's a never-ending type of place down here for them, but yeah, this is our A&D.

INMATE MOVEMENT

“Look at that. Not bad, eh? Bus day. So, and that's strip.”

“Hey, it's Rog. Do you know that one of your guy has court at 1:45? Okay, perfect. I'll set it up, and just make sure he stays on range, and then I'll call you ballpark, like, you know, 1:30, 1:35, and we'll get him over here. Okay, I appreciate it. Thank you. Okay, bye.”

So, my job is, I'm kind of in charge of the movement of the jail, from everything from our meds parade to work to our passes throughout the day, Monday to Friday, both morning and afternoon. It's just getting a lot of inmates where they need to be, to all their different appointments, to their programs, to see their parole officers.

Yeah, and it's a lot of inmates, a lot of new inmates doing that every day.

“Admin control to 4AB. You can send your work up and your passes, including your 845 healthcare, mental health passes, and your institutional court, 4AB work up, “ and now they'll start coming. “4AB, Roger.”

“You're good, man.” “Thank you.”

So, I consider my goal in here is a lot of times when these inmates are coming off range, and they're going to, whether it be healthcare programs, whatnot, is they're now going in to deal with someone that's not a security priority department.

I'm trying to get these guys in the mindset of what they're going into, and by that I mean that I'm trying to talk to them in a manner that they're not riled up. That they're able to, because they're going into, and sometimes get bad information, sometimes to do, as I said, they're always stressed from being in federal institution. So, I find that just talking to guys, it just helps the jail in general. I find you can dictate 90% of what happens in here just by being ahead of the game on it, by using your words and stuff before issues happen. Obviously, you can't stop everything, but you can definitely stop a lot of stuff just by being ahead of the game on how you deal with stuff.

“Okay, one, two, I can take one more. Yeah, three, you're welcome.”

Gary
Correctional Manager

There's nothing that happens in the institution movement-wise that does not go through Roger. So, Roger will control our movement up to healthcare. He'll control our movement down to programs.

To all of the different work locations. He knows the guys, the numbers of inmates that he has up in clinic. He knows the number of guys that he has downstairs in the mental health department. He coordinates all of that, and he has all of those different departments working together in unison so that he can do safe and secure movement throughout the institution. When you're in an institutional setting, routine is highly important, right? Routine, consistency, predictability, and it's guys like Roger that help that along.

Altogether about 150 this morning, though my second group of healthcare will be about 20 to come later. So about 130 in this rush, and then I'll pick away at the rest of the healthcare later. So, I just, I call them once I talk to the officer and find out that he has enough room, and then I call the next group of healthcare passes up at that.

Yeah, I for sure feel like I'm making a difference in the lives of some of the inmates. When you take the time to actually, you know, listen to them, and that could be more than they've had happen to them in years. So just something little that's, you know, to anybody else would be minuscule to them is a huge thing. And that little thing there is now open the door for us to be able to communicate, just taking your time to actually make them feel like they're, like they're being heard by someone is sometimes really huge in this spot.

“Giving last call for work for work 4AB and main control three AB and send your work up and  your passes, including your 845 healthcare mental health passes and your institutional court. Three AB workup.”

VIDEO COURT

“One inmate over to you for video court”
“Roger. Thank you.”
 So probably at least once today, if not a few times a day, we get a request for video court for these guys from across country, or the province. This one's from Ontario Court of Justice, Kingston. They give us all that information to punch them in. It's either through teams or zoom, majority are through zoom. I put in the information. We bring the inmate over and then they have their court here for anything it’s just normally remands and normally they're for a very quick time just saves us having to drive into the courthouse and stuff. All of this has come since COVID. And we are in the process of adding two new video courtrooms because we do so many of them and a lot of time they're at the same time so we have to hold the guys. So yeah, we just use this room down here.

All we're doing is we're entering in the meeting ID and then just enter and they should pop up. Say we're waiting. So, now it's up to the courts to do the rest. So, I'll bring the guy in. He'll just have a seat here and when the courts ready that will just pop on. They do everything else. When the inmate is done, he just comes back into us and we normally send him back to the range. The only time it would change if we had a guy from the max range where then we'd have to keep an officer because they're always under escort.

There, it’s on.

CLEARING INMATES

So, the officer announced on the PA before I came to clear. So, that's why you'll see guys already moving. Where when I go to the strip, they wait till I come down there because we don't have that access here. So, it just allows them time to start getting wrapped up.

“Thanks guys.”

With the morning schedules wrapping up, Roger now clears the inmates from the different areas in the institution. They will be heading back to the ranges for lunch and the 12 o'clock inmate count.

So yeah, this is obviously this is an inmate gym as well. All this. There will be inmates during the day down here, but just the workers, the rec workers and whatnot.

The Boss's office up there. But other than that, this is pretty quiet during the day, this area. As we get back, it should be cleared out. And then that's all of rec cleared.

“Strip control. The unit is going to clear the strip now.”

When I'm clearing, I go to the very end and I just make sure every guy comes this way. So when I'm done clearing the strip, the only inmates that will be left on the strip are the kitchen workers, which stay until the food carts go out and come back and then they go back for a count. But other than that, all the inmates will be off the strip.

Just giving CORCAN a heads up so they have time to turn all the machinery off and get all cleaned up and then I'll get them on the way back.

All right, now it looks like this area has already been cleared. Just going to send out a bunch of guys now.

“One, two, thanks guys.”

“We'll get them on the way back. I think they had guys.”

And so when I buzzed that time, gives them time to turn the machinery off, the inmates can go wash their hands, whatnot. They have work boots that change back into their running shoes, take off their gloves, put their glasses back, all that stuff. So that by the time I get here, now I'm just making sure that everyone's where they need to back at the ready to go. But before the other officer lets them out, I'm going to go check the shadow board, which is where the tools that could have been used by the inmates to make sure they're all back, where they belong. Once I realize they are, I'll give my partner a thumbs up and he'll let the inmates leave and then that will be cleared.

So, this is, you can see they're all just lined. Some have been x'd out, so I know they're never here. But other than that, if I ever came in here and once in a while and this was missing, I would just go ask the staff.

As long as I've been doing this, there's probably been a dozen times there has been a tool in here. Every single time it's been a staff member that has it. It's never been an inmate that's taken it. They're just still working and don't know I'm here yet. But obviously we still check this every day to make sure they're where they need to be.

Now, the inmates just don't have free access to this room or anything and that door would have been unlocked because I was coming. So that would normally be locked.

“You're good.”

That's now we've now cleared the jail, cleared recreation, cleared the strip. Now it's time for the food carts to go up and everyone start eating.

So, because now we have, it's why I try to be done by 11:05, we have until 12 to get all these food carts up. Everybody fed, all the food carts back, the kitchen workers back and then the jail counts at 12. So, it's why I'm very consistent on my times is because we have things that we have to do, which is count at 12.

I think now it's like approximately 650 inmates at, you know, obviously feeding them a few times a day. I mean, it's a, it's a lot.

They're now just waiting, the inmates that are left, because when these carts come back after, they'll clean them, put everything away before they head back to the ranges. They get their meals here so they can either eat it here or they'll take it back with them just depending on what they want to do.

So, it looks like it might be burger day.

You're concerned for your safety in the institution. Like any time you're, I mean, even with an agitated inmate, because you're not at that point. You don't know why the inmates here, you're not sure what his background is, what he's willing to do, what he has done in the past.

Obviously the second there's a weapon brought into play that raises that even more.

So, and even as, as calm and relaxed as you can be, you will feel yourself build up the second that you're dealing with, you know, an incident where like this would go wrong.

Especially if you are by yourself, because it might take a few seconds for your partners to get there depending on where you are in the jail, what you're doing.

And that's a, that's a worrisome feeling, especially when you're outnumbered. It's that. Overall, like most days, it's not something I deal with all the time in here, which is luckily.

Well, a good day for me is, you know, when I'm on schedule, when I get everyone where they need to be, we don't have any major issues.

Staff's happy, when I'm happy, you know, you definitely have a lot of laughs in here. And, you know, as tough as we have days, we do have, we're lucky there are some days that are actually enjoyable. I will go home to my wife and I'll say, “that was a good day today.” And I'll walk in with a smile, and she knows that.

So yeah, I just, anytime everyone goes home safe is what the goal is in here. And I mean, everybody on both sides of the bars, that's our job is to keep everybody safe. So, when you can say to that, when I come in on Monday mornings, the first thing I ask my bosses is I say, how is the weekend? And they'll say “slow”. And I'll say perfect, because that's what you're looking for. Slow. That just means nothing's happening. And that's the goal in here, that everyone gets out of here safe at the end of the day.

Shift would like to thank:

Correctional Officer, Roger Levac
All of the staff at Joyceville Institution
All of the Ontario Regional Headquarters staff