A male correctional officer at the Toronto South Detention Centre is in hospital and the jail is on lockdown ahead of the results of his test for COVID-19.

Warren (Smokey) Thomas, president of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, told the Star the man’s employer did not yet have his test results, but three other Toronto South jail workers are home under self-isolation.

The officer works in “an isolated area” at the jail, which has a capacity of more than 1,600 inmates, and “does not have close contact with inmates,” Thomas said.

Chad Oldfield, a corrections rep with the union, told the Star he believed the officer had recently returned from a trip abroad.

However, it was not immediately clear when the man returned to Canada, or how long he had been at the jail since.

“There’s conflicting information,” Oldfield said. “We’re still waiting for public health to investigate.”

In a statement Friday afternoon, the Ministry of Solicitor General, which oversees provincial jails, said it would not be commenting on the officer’s health, out of respect for his privacy. “The ministry has been in contact with the local public health unit in response to COVID-19 to ensure the continued health and wellbeing of our staff and those in our custody,” the statement said.

Also Friday, the Ontario government announced new steps to reduce jail populations and slow the cycling in and out of inmates during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In a statement, Minister of Health Christine Elliott and Solicitor General Sylvia Jones announced amendments to regulations that will “allow senior corrections officials to expand the use of temporary absences and for the Ontario Parole Board to use alternatives to in-person meetings.”

Corrections staff can now issue temporary passes to inmates beyond the current 72-hour maximum and “will avoid cycling individuals back and forth between the community and a correctional facility,” the statement read.

The temporary absences will also allow for early release of inmates nearing the end of sentences, but they would be assessed to ensure they are “low risk” to re-offend, the statement read.

“Those inmates who have been convicted of serious crimes, such as violent crimes or crimes involving guns, would not be considered for early release.”

In recent days, staff at Ontario jails have warned they won’t be able to stop the COVID-19 pandemic from spreading within the correctional system.

The measures being put in place to prevent and contain the virus from hitting vulnerable inmates at jails and federal prisons across Canada are being closely watched by unions, governments and academics.

More than half of Ontario’s jails are operating above desired population levels.

The provinces jails housed around 7,500 adults on an average day, about 70 per cent of whom are legally innocent and awaiting trial.

According to data from the Ontario Auditor General, a third of inmates had mental health alerts on their file, and institutions were ill-prepared and ill-equipped to offer specialized care.

In-person visits have been limited or shut down across the country, with telephone and video conferencing filling the need. In Ontario, in-person professional visits were still being allowed, until Friday. The government announced it is “temporarily halting personal visits.”

In some provinces, including Ontario and Nova Scotia, low-risk inmates serving sentences on weekends are serving them in the community on temporary absence passes.

In Alberta, the Edmonton police service is encouraging officers to use their discretionary powers to reduce the number of people headed to jail.

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Momentum continues to build online for free phone calls for those behind bars in the province. The petition, organized by the Criminalization and Punishment Education Project at Carleton University, also calls on Ontario’s solicitor general to free as many inmates as possible.

“We are concerned about the mental well-being of prisoners considering the existing barriers to communication prisoners face,” the group said in the petition.

“Ontario’s jail phone system places restrictions on telecommunication that harms prisoners’ well-being, especially during the spread of the virus. The current policy only allows for expensive collect calls to landlines.”