A look inside new superjail Toronto South Detention Centre
BY TERRY DAVIDSON, TORONTO SUN
TORONTO – Ontario’s newest and largest jail is almost 234,000 square-metres of concrete, steel and impenetrable Plexiglas windows and has the technology to cavity-search an inmate without laying a hand on him.
It was media day at the new Toronto South Detention Centre (TSDC) in Etobicoke Thursday, where members of the press were given a limited tour of the $594 million superjail by the correctional officials who’ll be running it when the first of the 1,650 full-time inmates it is equipped to house are accepted later this year.
What makes the TSDC unique, says director Rose Buhagiar, is the minimization of the otherwise risky day-to-day movement of inmates within the institution, accomplished through video-link technology for visits with inmates, open-concept cell block units, increased direct supervision, enhanced security technology and inmate programs and amenities located right inside the units their cells are in.
“We are a state-of-the-art facility,” said Buhagiar of the TSDC, a maximum-security facility to house adult males of various risk levels who are in for short sentences, those awaiting trial, on immigration holds or those in transition to other institutions.
Just to the right of the TSDC’s bright, open-concept reception area — which looks more like the entrance of a convention centre than a jail — is a room containing rows of video booths where visitors communicate with inmates using similar booths within their units.
Just inside the jail’s internal security perimeter on the first floor is what one official described as the TSDC’s “nerve centre,” a darkened room filled with video monitors.
The TSDC, which will replace the aging Don Jail and the Toronto West Detention Centre and attempt to relieve overcrowding, also boasts 54 program rooms, including libraries, a ventilated room for Aboriginal smudging sessions, and a multi-faith prayer room with a footwash station for Muslim inmates.
Down the hall — one of many white, imposing corridors with windows of clear, double-layered Plexiglas and metal bars — is the intake unit, which includes two Body Orifice Scanning System chairs equipped with metal detectors to search for any small weapons hidden in rectal or oral openings. In fact, all Ontario institutions were equipped with BOSS chairs in 2008, spokesman Brent Ross said.
The average inmate will be housed in one of 32 Direct Supervision Units, open-concept cell blocks of white and purple, each containing inmates’ cells, a guard station, a handful of metal tables and chairs, TVs, and a seating area of unmovable rubberized chairs.
Off to the side of most units are ‘yards’ — small, concrete-enclosed areas with a basketball hoop and fencing on the ceiling for fresh air.
There is also a a 48-bed special-handling unit for inmates new to prison life and for those at risk of harm in general population. There is also a segregation unit, a mental-health facility, and a 35-bed infirmary with a nursing station, cells containing beds with guard rails, and a highly-restricted pharmacy.
http://www.torontosun.com/2013/10/03/toronto-south-detention-centre-set-to-open
New Toronto South Detention Centre almost ready to open
By David Shum Global News
TORONTO – Convicted criminals in Ontario will have a new place to call home very soon.
The Toronto South Detention Centre in Etobicoke is set to open later this fall and is considered a “state-of-the-art” facility.
Media crews were given a tour inside the building on Thursday, which is located at the former Mimico Correctional Centre.
The new prison will replace the ageing Toronto Don Jail and the Toronto West Detention Centre.
Construction of the prison was announced back on May 9, 2008 by the Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services.
The detention centre was built with a private-public partnership at a cost of $594 million that includes designing, building, financing and a 30 year maintenance contract.
The prison has a 1,650 bed capacity and offers a number of specialized programs for offenders, including a mental health assessment unit, special needs unit and an Aboriginal program area.
The new facility has an open concept public reception area and used bricks from the former Mimico bricks works company in the lobby of the building.
Some of the new design and technological features of the TSDC include x-ray devices and metal detectors, 70 video visit terminals for public use, and videoconferencing for routine bail and remand hearings.
New Toronto South Detention Centre almost ready to open
A Tour of the New Toronto South Detention Centre
Toronto’s new super prison is impressive, but also a little disturbing.
BY TODD AALGAARD • PHOTOS BY GIORDANO CIAMPINI
From a distance, the site of the new Toronto South Detention Centre—occupying the same land used for correctional purposes since 1887—is exactly what you’d expect the environs of a prison to look like.
Most recently the address of the Mimico Correctional Centre—which officially closed its doors on December 5, 2011—the new, imposing structure at 160 Horner Road (beside the Etobicoke railway tracks, two right-hand turns off the Lakeshore) has a monolithic quality to it, almost brutal in its massive, looming presence. The stated intent of its design, officials say, is to blend seamlessly into the landscape. But there’s absolutely no subterfuge or subtlety to its purpose.
We, along with other media, had the chance to tour the prison earlier today.
Yes, it’s a testament to what technology can do for a detention facility. Yes, there’s clearly a lot of progressive, innovative thinking that went into its construction, enough to qualify the design for LEED contention, at any rate.
Still, it’s a place where human beings are stacked and punitively filed away, and every forward-thinking idea showcased within its walls reinforces that fact. The need for justice aside, that’s hard to ignore—especially these days.
“[The Toronto South Detention Centre] is the model for institutions like this for years to come,” said Bruce O’Neill, Senior Communications Coordinator with the Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services. Clearly, there’s plenty inside to make the new institution the envy of every prison in Canada: the video-conferencing system that ensures inmates never have to leave their cell block to connect with loved ones, the modular construction that can allow for relative ease of expansion, should the need arise. Even with space for 1,650 inmates—along with the 320 already serving time at the Toronto Intermittent Centre, an adjoining facility—the place could always be bigger.
Past the area where busloads of inmates are received, strip-searched, and, in some cases, subjected to body-cavity searches using devices called “BOSS Chairs”—an informal acronym for “Body Orifice Scanners,” which resemble shoe-shine stands—the space seems to steadily constrict.
Some inmates may never leave these cell blocks during the length of their sentences, officials said. Even an “open-air exercise yard” is little more than a chamber, about half the size of a basement apartment, with metal meshwork open to the outside. Efficiency, not amenities, seems to be what makes this place an exemplar of Canadian corrections.
This utilitarian ethos earned the Toronto South Detention Centre some of its earliest media coverage in 2011. That January, reports described the modular, lego-like construction as a “first for the province, if not the country.” Pre-fabricated pieces of the building were trucked in from Atlanta starting that year.
None of this is to suggest some nefarious, dark-hooded intent on behalf of the men and women who physically run the place. For all the brutalism of the institution, there’s still a sweat lodge on the grounds for Aboriginal detainees, and the facility’s overseers are in active discussions with local school boards to give the prison’s educational programs a shot in the arm. In measurable ways, the progressiveness of the design matches a certain evolved thinking about prisons.
But in our current national context, with immigration raids becoming so commonplace as to be televised spectacles, it’s the looming role of the Toronto South Detention Centre (in partnership with Canadian Border Services) that rings most uncomfortably. Behind these walls, men and women swept up in the state’s immigration dragnet will be interned—perhaps as long as it takes to kick them out of the country, perhaps longer.
Every steel door and cold examination table we saw sharpened this thought. Biking away from the facility, its silhouette imposed over a skyline of grain elevators, it was disturbing—for lack of a better word—to imagine refugees seeing this tangle of human and industrial intersections as their last taste of Canada, the city hanging in the background, as far away as it’s ever been.
http://torontoist.com/2013/10/a-tour-of-the-new-toronto-south-detention-centre/gciampini_tsdc-4114/?include=280673,280501,280502,280503,280509,280508,280507,280506,280510,280511,280512,280513,280514,280515,280517,280516,280520,280521,280522,280523,280524,280529,280528,280527,280526,280525,280518
1650囚犯将入住超级监狱
星岛日报/被誉为“超级监狱”的多伦多南区羁留中心(Toronto South Detention Centre)，即将容纳多达1,650名囚犯“入伙”。该中心设备科技先进，室内和室内设计均显心思，高天花板的囚室带来更宽倘空间的感觉，透光窗口让囚犯感受到日与夜之分。
安省社区安全及惩教服务厅昨晨招待传媒实地参观多伦多南羁留中心。该中心位于怡陶碧谷贺拿道160号(Horner Ave.)，该中心启用后将取代多伦多监狱及多伦多西区羁留中心。羁留中心有两幢主要建筑物，包括可容纳1,650名遭羁留和已判刑犯人的最高级别保安囚禁设施，以及可收容320名周末服刑短期犯人的多伦多间歇性监禁中心。
囚室可容纳两人
社区安全及惩教服务厅官员向传媒展示遭羁留和已判刑犯人的囚禁设施，并介绍一些新设计和设备，包括视像探监系统、囚室视像过堂系统、X光扫瞄和金属探测保安仪器等。囚禁设施备有多种囚室，除俗称“大仓”的囚室，亦有病房囚室、精神健康评估囚室、特殊组群囚室(如某帮派成员)、单独隔离囚室等。
“大仓”一般有两层，每层有多个囚室，囚室可容纳两人。在“大仓”下层，设有一些公共设备，包括浴室、看电视座位、视像探监系统及接听方付费电话等。
社区安全及惩教服务厅官员预料，多伦多南区羁留中心可于数周后正式启用。当局将于今天(4日)起一连三日，开放多伦多南区羁留中心，招待公众实地参观。开放时间由上午9时至下午4时，参观时段约长达半小时。
