In Ontario, prisons for young Canadians have become a black box

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Simon Rolston is the author of Prison Life Writing: Conversion and the Literary Roots of the U.S. Prison System.

Once, many years ago, when I was visiting a jail outside Edmonton, a guard told me the facility had too many “blind spots.” These unsupervised areas, he explained, invited all kinds of illicit or dangerous activities.

The same goes for correctional institutions writ large. Without proper oversight, they create opportunities for violence and abuse. A lack of transparency is especially dangerous for institutions whose mandate includes punishing children who are already social outcasts, have limited support networks, and few avenues for redress if anything should happen to them.

That’s why we should be worried about a summary of Serious Occurrence Reports (SORs) recently released by the Ontario Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services. The summary tracked SORs – which record incidents that affect the safety, rights and well-being of youth in custody – filed at the William E. Hay Centre, an Ottawa juvenile detention facility, from 2019 to 2024.

Along with 246 assaults, 18 incidents of physical abuse, 267 uses of physical restraint and 12 cases of sexual abuse, the summary documents more than a thousand serious occurrences at the facility – a shocking number for a 40-bed institution. Some of those incidents of sexual abuse can likely be attributed to Kevan Henshaw, a former youth justice worker who, in March, was convicted on almost two dozen child sexual abuse charges, including for secretly recording naked boys in the centre’s shower area.

However, the SOR summary only provides numbers. There are no details about what happened, or whether the children affected are okay, or if any of the incidents resulted in consequences or policy changes. Making sense of the summary is like trying to solve an unnumbered connect-the-dots puzzle: Something alarming is clearly there, but more information is needed to see it.

Elizabeth Venczel, a University of Ottawa criminology doctoral student who filed the Freedom of Information request obliging the ministry to release this summary, is frustrated that the ministry has so far refused to share anything more specific. Knowing more would help lawyers, advocates, scholars and the public determine why such abuses are happening and to what extent these incidents are systemic. The ministry is claiming it’s protecting children’s privacy – and certainly, kids’ privacy rights matter. But if privacy can protect, it can also hide things. In other words, it can create blind spots.

Over the years, changes to youth criminal justice have made the need for transparency more acute. Ever since the Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA) became law in 2003, there’s been a massive decrease in the number of kids sent to detention centres; as a result, many youth facilities have been shuttered. This is a good thing, to be sure, but when those facilities close, the children are sent elsewhere, often to overcrowded facilities far from home, which makes it difficult for family, friends or community members to visit.

This is especially problematic for Indigenous youth, who are grossly overrepresented in the corrections system; in 2017-2018, they comprised 8 per cent of Canada’s youth population, but accounted for 43 per cent of young Canadians in custody. Indigenous youth from remote communities, like those in Northern Ontario, are particularly affected. Kids are being removed from their communities and culture – reiterating some of the logic of residential schools.

Keep in mind that youth in detention are often reluctant to report mistreatment, especially sexual abuse. They’re ashamed, they fear reprisals, they worry that reporting an incident could negatively impact their cases in youth justice court. They may simply choose to self-censor, keep their heads down and hope for the best. Indeed, Ms. Venczel suspects the actual number of incidents at Hay Centre is even higher than reported.

Perhaps more than ever, then, transparency and effective oversight matter. Ontario’s Ombudsman’s Office investigates complaints and systemic problems in youth facilities, but youth detention is one of several areas the ombudsman oversees; incidents like those at Hay are undoubtedly being missed.

So, along with better access to lawyers, youth in detention need an ombudsman exclusively for their issues – someone who has the capacity to ensure that youth institutions aren’t functionally blind spots. Bringing back the Ontario Child Advocacy office, which was shuttered in 2019, would be a good start.

If protecting kids isn’t itself a winning argument, then consider this: Adolescent brains are pliable, uniquely open to change. These years offer a fleeting chance to help them mature in ways that are harder to do once they’re older – especially if they’re raised in a system that’s brutalized them. Let’s ensure the opportunity isn’t missed.