![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/1765797548_482_default.jpg\")
<\/p>\nAshley Stevens has scars inside and out from her time in an Ontario jail.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not because she was involved in violent confrontations with other inmates, but because she suffered a miscarriage and then an unrelated infection.<\/p>\n
\u201cI got sepsis,\u201d said Stevens, who was treated at an Ottawa-area hospital. \u201cThe doctor even said if I didn’t come in when I did, I would have been dead.\u201d<\/p>\n
Earlier this year, Stevens, 30, spent four months at the Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre for crimes related to domestic violence \u2014 uttering threats, mischief and assault. She was initially granted bail, but ended up in jail after breaching her conditions.<\/p>\n
The day she was sent to jail, she found out she was pregnant. It would be her fourth baby.<\/p>\n
Weeks into her incarceration, she knew something was wrong.<\/p>\n
\u201cI kept telling the nurses I’m still bleeding a lot,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Stevens said she bled for five days before she was sent to the hospital, where it was confirmed she\u2019d lost the baby.<\/p>\n
WATCH | Ashley Stevens describes her miscarriage in jail:<\/p>\n
Former inmate says she miscarried, got a severe infection while incarcerated in Ontario jail<\/p>\n
A former prisoner tells the CBC\u2019s Julie Ireton about her health crisis inside the Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre.<\/p>\n
When she returned to jail, she noticed a wound on her left buttock that was painful and swollen.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was just feeling really sick, but not, like, pregnancy sick. I felt like I was dying, and I ended up passing out,\u201d said Stevens.<\/p>\n
She was taken back to hospital and had surgery to remove the failed pregnancy from her uterus. While there, Stevens said a doctor told her the wound on her buttocks had gone septic.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was fully ignored\u2026 I was pulling my pants down, showing [correctional officers] my infection,” said Stevens, to which the officers replied, \u201c\u2018Don\u2019t worry, just stay off of it and if it gets worse, just let us know.’\u201d<\/p>\n
She said she had little contact with jail medical staff because \u201cto see the doctor, you’re only allowed to see him once a month, and you get to see him for a few seconds.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stevens\u2019s struggle to get care is not unique. According to CBC\u2019s analysis, complaints filed by inmates have doubled over the past six years.<\/p>\n
\u2018These are not frivolous claims\u2019<\/p>\n
More than a third of the complaints received between January and June 2025 were related to health care \u2014 primarily access to doctors and nurses and issues around medication.<\/p>\n
“The health complaints jump off the page. These are not frivolous claims,” said University of Ottawa criminology professor Justin Pich\u00e9, one of two researchers who read CBC\u2019s findings.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople with health issues and with mental health issues often end up behind bars. When they end up there, they still require care, but it’s in short supply,” he said. “They don’t have enough staff \u2026 enough resources for that, and the prison is not a hospital.\u201d<\/p>\n
WATCH | Too many prisoners, too few staff:![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/1765797548_530_default.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Jails lack staff, resources to properly deliver health care, criminology prof says<\/p>\n
University of Ottawa criminology professor Justin Pich\u00e9 says health complaints in Ontario jails \u2018jump off the page.\u2019<\/p>\n
When accounting for the significant increase in prisoner population<\/a>, complaints have gone from the equivalent of nine complaints for every 100 inmates in 2019 to 17 per 100 inmates in 2024.<\/p>\n The figures were obtained as part of a larger CBC investigation<\/a> that revealed Ontario jails are also heading toward a record year for overcrowding, remand populations and lockdowns, just as politicians debate bail reforms that could lead to a further influx of people behind bars.<\/p>\n The Ontario Ministry of the Solicitor General, which is responsible for provincial correctional facilities that house prisoners with sentences of less than two years and those on remand, said it could not comment on Stevens’s case because it involved personal medical information. <\/p>\n In an email to CBC News, it said there are policies and procedures in place to respond to situations where an inmate is in medical distress or requires hospitalization.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cEach facility has primary care practitioners responsible for the provision of primary medical services,” the ministry said. “Inmates have access to health care practitioners, such as nurses, nurse practitioners and physicians.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Government-employed medical staff dropped by nearly 50%<\/p>\n CBC also obtained daily staff counts for all jails \u2014 including correctional officers, medical staff, social workers and programming staff \u2014 for January 2019 to June 2025. (The government data does not specify whether these positions were permanent or temporary, full or part-time.)<\/p>\n The figures suggest jails employed hundreds more medical staff before and during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2019, more than 1,000 medical professionals were considered \u201cactive staff\u201d; by 2025, that had dropped to around 550.<\/p>\n The statistics are not surprising to Pich\u00e9. \u201cIf you talk to nurses or doctors, they’re already finding it extremely difficult to work in hospitals. They’re going to go and work in a prison?\u201d<\/p>\n Adam Cygler, co-chair of the occupational stress and injury subcommittee for the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU), said nurses contracted through agencies have been brought in to boost staff levels, but it\u2019s not enough.<\/p>\n A CBC investigation has found that Ontario\u2019s jail population has increased<\/a> by more than 30 per cent since 2019.<\/p>\n \u201cEverybody is just being run off their feet, because there’s 30 per cent more people to provide services to, and we don’t have the staff alongside to be able to continue to do that,\u201d said Cygler, who is also a social worker at the Ontario Correctional Institute in Brampton.<\/p>\n In an email, the Ontario Solicitor General\u2019s office told CBC \u201ccorrectional capacity has also been supported by hiring over 2,500 new staff \u2014 including correctional officers, mental health counselors, nurses and other professionals.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018We’re in a health-care crisis\u2019<\/p>\n Dr. Louisa Marion-Bellemare, who works in an Ontario jail, said access to health care isn’t just a corrections problem.<\/p>\n \u201cIf we’re in a health-care crisis outside of jails or provincial corrections, then there’s also a crisis for health-care providers within provincial corrections,\u201d said Marion-Bellemare, a physician with a focus in addictions and Indigenous health.<\/p>\n Before building more jails as a solution to overcrowding, Marion-Bellemare said leaders should take a step back and look at who\u2019s currently detained. For example, she estimates more than 95 per cent of the patients she assesses in jail have substance-use disorders and are significantly sicker than 20 years ago.<\/p>\n \u201cThey do cocaine, drink alcohol, do crystal meth and fentanyl. It’s a much more complex patient,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n With limited resources, she said jail staff have to triage problems.<\/p>\n \u201cAs health-care professionals, that is the ethical thing to do,” said Marion-Bellemare. “Because we have limited health-care resources, we must see the sickest people first.\u201d<\/p>\n She also said more programs and transitional housing are needed to support people suffering from addiction and mental health problems before they land in jail.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat’s going to solve this problem is keeping people out of jail in the first place,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Pich\u00e9 says the way society perceives the most vulnerable is also an issue.\u00a0\u201cWhen we see public drug use, people living with mental health issues … people who are unhoused or encampments, it makes us uncomfortable,\u201d said Pich\u00e9. \u201cThey\u2019re not going to find care in cages.\u201d<\/p>\n Judge acknowledges hardship in sentencing<\/p>\n In April, Ashley Stevens pleaded guilty to some of the charges against her and was sentenced to another 30 days in jail.<\/p>\n Stevens\u2019s lawyer, Nevada McEniry-Hatajlo, told CBC that during sentencing, the judge acknowledged her client\u2019s medical hardship in jail when handing out punishment.<\/p>\n \u201cThe judge had seen everything that I had went through,\u201d said Stevens, who has now recovered from the infection, but is still coming to terms with the miscarriage.<\/p>\n Judges have already stayed cases<\/a> or given shorter sentences<\/a>, citing a variety of conditions for detainees in Ontario jails<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cI think judges are becoming much more aware of it,\u201d said Ontario Sen. Kim Pate, who is also the former executive director of the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies.<\/p>\n \u201cThe waits and the conditions of confinement to which they’re subjected means that oftentimes, judges are trying to compensate for that.”<\/p>\n METHODOLOGY: HOW CBC ANALYZED ONTARIO JAIL DATA<\/p>\n Through freedom of information requests, CBC News obtained datasets from the Ontario Ministry of the Solicitor General representing jail population, prisoner complaints and daily staff counts for the period of Jan. 1, 2019, to July 1, 2025.<\/p>\n Inmate complaints over the first six months of 2025 were compared to the Jan. 1-June 30 period of each previous calendar year (2019\u20132024) to ensure accurate year-over-year trends. To account for changes in the jail population, a complaint rate was calculated by dividing the total number of complaints filed in a given year by the average number of inmates, then multiplying by 100 (complaints per 100 inmates). The data did not specify the outcome of complaints or if the same person filed multiple complaints.<\/p>\n Originally, more than 800 different reasons were cited for complaints. To facilitate analysis and visualization, complaints were divided into two main subcategories: complaints related to \u201cHealth care\u201d and complaints related to \u201cJail operations.\u201d All complaints related to the day-to-day operation of the jail (e.g., mail, hygiene, diet, telephone) were grouped together as “Daily operations.” All complaints related to medication (e.g., availability, dosage, dispensing, diverting, method, timing) were grouped in one “Medication” category.<\/p>\n Staffing figures were extracted from a government dataset breaking down daily counts of “active staff” in the “medical” position between Jan. 1, 2019, and July 1, 2025. To determine a yearly average, CBC first determined the total number of “active” medical staff across all provincial jails for every day of the year. The yearly averages (2019-2025) were calculated from these daily totals. The data does not specify whether these positions were permanent, temporary, full-time or part-time. The government provided no predetermined staffing model and stated the figures were the most comprehensive response possible.<\/p>\n Estimates for the average number of prisoners were calculated by dividing the monthly total number of incarceration days (\u201cDays stay\u201d) by the number of days in that month, a method later confirmed to be accurate by the government.<\/p>\n Research and data compilation: Julie Ireton, CBC News (July-November 2025)\u00a0<\/p>\n Data verification and analysis: Valerie Ouellet, CBC News (October-November 2025)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ashley Stevens has scars inside and out from her time in an Ontario jail. 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Dr. Louisa Marion-Bellemare, who works in an Ontario jail, said access to health care isn’t just a corrections problem. (Nick Purdon\/CBC)<\/p>\n