Correctional officers in “a constant struggle,” to keep drugs, brew out of the hands of inmates.
BY SUE YANAGISAWA
The Brockville Recorder and Times
KINGSTON, Ontario — An eastern Ontario prison’s 500 inmates remained in lock-down Thursday as members of an Ontario Provincial Police-led Penitentiary Squad continued their investigation into the death of an inmate early Wednesday evening and the apparent poisoning of three others.
Janine Chown, a spokesman for the Correctional Service of Canada, said “preliminary information indicates (the inmates) consumed a home-made brew of some sort.”
A release from Corrections states that the four were discovered “in varying stages of medical distress” Wednesday afternoon at the Joyceville Institution.
Chown said the ill inmates were found near “count time,” when correctional officers walk the ranges and verify that none of their prisoners are missing or injured.
It hasn’t been disclosed where the men were found, however, or under what circumstances.
Three of them were taken to Kingston General Hospital in what police have described as “critical” and “serious condition.”
The fourth man, Christopher Morriseau, was examined and pronounced dead by paramedics at the institution, Chown said.
Morriseau was sentenced in August 2005 in Thunder Bay to two years, nine months for aggravated assault and had only months left to serve.
A post-mortem examination was conducted on Morriseau’s body on Thursday at Kingston General Hospital.
The findings have not been released, however, and police said investigators were still awaiting toxicology results.
In the meantime, the three inmates who were taken to hospital were being treated for “consumption of a noxious substance.”
Jason Godin, Ontario Region president of the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers, said “obviously these types of situations raise concerns for us.”
Correctional officers, he explained, are in “a constant struggle,” to keep drugs and home-made alcohol, or brew as it’s known in prison, out of the hands of inmates.
Godin said prison brew doesn’t have to be smuggled in and is made from anything the brew master can scrounge to ferment - from raisins to old bread and potato peels.
Following the discovery of the four stricken inmates, correctional officers at Joyceville sought and were granted permission to search for contraband, such as “stills” used in the manufacture of alcohol, Godin said.
Copyright 2008 Sun Media Corporation