Sentences lowered for kidnappers, shooters and drug traffickers due to conditions at Toronto's 'Guantanamo South'

Dozens of criminals found guilty of knife attacks, gunplay, drug trafficking and child pornography are among those being given lower sentences and sent back to the street sooner following a standoff between Ontario judges and the provincial government over notorious conditions in a Toronto jail dubbed “Guantanamo South.”

In the last year, records show at least 24 criminals have had their time in custody reduced because of repeated lockdowns, pest infestations and other harsh treatment at the Toronto South Detention Centre, located near Kipling Avenue and the Gardiner Expressway in Etobicoke, as judges give extra credit for time served in inhumane conditions, while critics say Ontario’s government is ignoring the problem.

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“I’d like to say it’s unusual, but unfortunately it’s all too common,” said Toronto lawyer Christian Pearce, whose client Yanique Ellison was given a six-month deduction after a guilty plea to manslaughter: he provided a COVID-19 mask as a disguise to another man who shot a bar customer dead after a dispute.

Ellison was triple-bunked in a cell designed for two, and spent almost a year of his time behind bars awaiting trial in lockdown, where inmates have “no privacy and are forced to urinate and defecate in front of their cellmates,” the judge in his case found in December, sentencing him to 7.5 years instead of eight to reflect “exceptionally harsh conditions.”

The provincially-run jail holds inmates before trial and inmates who have been sentenced to less than two years in prison.

While the jail used lockdowns as a way to deal with the stresses of the COVID-19 pandemic, the judges also identified the cause of many of the lockdowns as persistent staff shortages. That issue long predates the pandemic and persists today in ways that will make the public less safe when the inmates get out, Pearce said.

“These guys are not being rehabilitated in any shape or form, making them worse off, angrier, there’s no access to programming, and it becomes not about justice but about punishment,” Pearce said.

In one case, a man guilty of firearms offences produced evidence the cells were infested with ants, cockroaches and spiders, and inmates were not given clean laundry. His sentence was dropped by 60 days. Another who was found guilty of kidnapping showed photos taken by a correctional officer of mice and silverfish, which the judge took into account.

In another case, Madhi Afrah pleaded guilty to being part of a firefight in a parking garage and to wounding another man. While awaiting trial in Toronto South Detention Centre, he cut the tendons of his finger on a stool; the judge in his case noted that a nurse ignored it and he was only sent to surgery the next day and the finger became infected. He was also fed seafood despite a severe allergy.

“The defendant has indeed suffered while in prison, beyond what is acceptable in a society which prides itself on a correctional system that assumes a duty of care for inmates. The combination of his hand injury coupled with lockdowns deserves significant mitigation of sentence,” Justice Maylor wrote.

In another case where a man brought a gun to a firefight and found himself facing repeated lockdowns, Justice J. Himel gave just over six months' credit.

“It is warranted that credit be quantified to demonstrate the court’s condemnation of these conditions,” Himel wrote.

In another case, Marc Owusu-Boamah was found guilty of kidnapping an Etobicoke man and was among those who repeatedly beat him and tortured him with hot liquid, giving him second-degree burns and permanent scarring before leaving him in a roadway.

Justice R. Maxwell would have given him a sentence of 11 years but pointed to “exceptionally harsh” conditions including the lockdowns at Toronto South Detention Centre, and reduced that to 10 years.

“I agree with the position expressed by many judges… that lockdowns arising from staff shortages, and even those arising for security reasons, should not be seen as just the price to be paid by those in custody,” the justice wrote.

The NDP’s Justice Critic, Kristyn Wong-Tam, said in an interview that the jail is among several parts of Ontario’s justice system that are not functioning properly thanks to underfunding and staff shortages, and judges have to deal with it in sentencing.

“Overcrowding in the detention centres leads to more conflict, disease, sickness, and burnout with respect to the staff who are already overworked,” they said.

“When you don’t have staff, they’re forced to lock these individuals in the cells and the conditions are not human. A judge has to consider all that. And they don’t get to sentence the individuals properly,” Wong-Tam said.

The provincial government didn’t provide information on staff numbers at Toronto South Detention Centre, but said in a statement that since July 2020, over 2,000 new correctional officers have graduated and been deployed at correctional institutions across the province, including 434 at the Toronto South Detention Centre.

The government is spending $500 million over five years to modernize the institution and hire staff, said spokesperson Greg Flood.

“New construction and infrastructure upgrades will help alleviate capacity pressures and create additional space for enhanced programming and community reintegration supports and will also support the delivery of mental health services, inmate programming, and correctional officer training,” Flood said.

Many of the judges who reduced sentences in the cases above are applying a precedent in a case called R v. Marshall, which says that they can consider harsh conditions in sentencing but cannot end up with a sentence that is unfit to the crime.

In some cases reviewed by CTV News, the judges declined to apply the credit directly, saying it was only a mitigating factor in sentencing.

Judges have complained about conditions in the jail since at least 2020, when Justice Andras Schreck called them “unacceptable, shocking deplorable, harsh, oppressive, degrading, disheartening, appalling, Dickensian, regressive and inexcusable.”

He quoted former South African president and former prisoner Nelson Mandela in his judgement, saying, “No one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails.”