PC Corrections Critic MPP Rick Nicholls is taking issue with the Ministry of Correctional Services after the death of one inmate and the hospitalization of another at the Elgin Middlesex Detention Centre.
Middlesex London EMS was called to the EMDC around 7:15am on Monday after the two men were found without vital signs. They were taken to hospital where one was pronounced dead and the other remains in stable condition. London police do not suspect foul play.
Nicholls says he firmly believes the incident, which is believed to have been caused by a drug overdose, could have been prevented had a full-body scanner been installed at the facility.
"We do know that these scanners are expensive, however, how do you put a price tag on a [human] life," Nicholls tells BlackburnNews.com. "[The ministry] needs to speed it up. They need to get those body scanners in as soon as possible... If not, there will be more deaths."
In early May, the former Minister of Community Safety and Correctional Services Yasir Naqvi announced that the province will be installing body scanners in all 26 adult correctional facilities in Ontario over two years. The EMDC is expected to be among the first 11 facilities receiving scanners by the end of March 2017.
Nicholls says 2017 is "too late" and is accusing the ministry of being negligent when it comes to installing the scanners. He says not having them puts correctional officers and inmates at risk.
"[The Ontario government] has wasted money in many other areas and that money could have gone to getting these facilities better equipped with body scanners so incidents such as an overdose, or the bringing of weapons or drugs, would have been eliminated," he says. "As far as I'm concerned, they are not focusing their priorities in the right direction."
The price tag on a full-body scanner is $250,000, and the total cost of scanners at all 26 facilities including maintenance on the units over ten years, would be $9.5-million.
The EMDC has been been in the spotlight over the past several years due to overcrowding, inadequate staffing levels, and other inmate deaths. Since 2009, there have been at least six deaths at the jail.
-With files from Miranda Chant