Segregation. Isolation. Overcrowding. No showers. No fresh air. No family visits. No lawyer meetings. Seething anger that can be taken out on anybody.

And, ultimately, reduced prison sentences.

The Toronto South Detention Centre is broken.

Which, down the line, means convicted individuals have their custodial sentences lopped due to credit time given for the intolerable conditions.

Earlier this week, Justice John McMahon — and not for the first time — blasted the provincial government for “absolutely unacceptable” continuing lockdowns at Canada’s second-largest corrections detention facility, which compelled the judge to reduce the sentence for a cocaine-dealing, firearm-packing offender.

“This court has and continues to see, on a daily basis, lockdown reports, because they have insufficient staff to staff the location,” the respected veteran judge wrote in his sentencing decision. “It results in prisoners being locked down for an inordinate amount of time.”

McMahon sentenced Andrew Barnes, who pleaded guilty, to four and a half years — minus 150 days for 300 of 405 days spent in full or partial lockdown, and 28 months deducted for time already served pending trial. As a result, Barnes receives two times credit for time served, instead of the 1 ½ times-credit for time served. This due to lockdowns caused by staff shortage.

According to material filed with the court, 285 days Barnes spent in pre-trial custody were the result of insufficient staff at the institution, which routinely triggers lockdowns, for the safety of employees and inmates.

“What is absolutely unacceptable, shocking and deplorable is of those 300 days … only 15 have been for safety issues, searches and various items that are appropriate.’’

McMahon added: “It will be noted because of the lack of resources and staff shortage, this accused will serve five months less of a sentence because Corrections, four years later, still cannot provide sufficient staff to make sure the institution works as it should.”

In a pre-sentencing affidavit filed with the court, Barnes, who was denied bail in the fall of 2018, related his experience at Toronto South (known colloquially as Guantanamo South, the $1-billion Hellhole and the Plea Factory, the latter because so many inmates plead guilty just to get out of the place.

“When there is a full lockdown, I am let out of cell for approximately 30 minutes a day to take a shower and/or try to use the telephone and/or try to have yard time. Two cells are let out at the same time, so that is four inmates …,” Barnes said in the affidavit.

“In order to have a shower, sometimes the inmates hold on to the trays our food is served on, and refuse to give them back to the guards. This is our form of protest so that we can get a shower ….

“When I don’t get to use the telephone, I cannot contact my lawyer. I have received messages from my lawyer when she has called numerous times and I am unable to speak with her.”

It is a recurring issue that cascades through the corrections and justice systems. Routinely, defendants are not available on time for appearances because they haven’t been delivered to court, which further jams the crowded docket. Juries are left to twiddle their thumbs. Defence lawyers spend countless hours cooling their heels at Toronto South waiting to see clients, often on the Legal Aid clock and dime.

Toronto South is a remand facility; inmates are still before the courts and presumed innocent.

“The new giant factory that is the Toronto South Detention Centre, while gaining an increasingly and well-deserved reputation as a white elephant, is turning into a giant black hole for those who disappear there while presumed to be innocent of any crime who are awaiting trial,” says John Struthers, president of the criminal lawyers’ association.

“It’s an extremely unpleasant place to be and a lot of guards are having a lot of trouble with the ways it’s working. Many of them are calling in sick, or disinterested, I guess. As a result they’re very short-staffed all the time. I hesitate to say that it almost seems to be by design. There’s no other excuse for it. It’s a toxic place, not just for the accused, but also for the guards who are very having a very hard time with it.

“It’s a failure from top to bottom.’’

Lockdown basically is solitary confinement, to a large extent, because, in the pod system, there are fewer guards to watch over more inmates. When a guard calls in sick, they lose the ability to supervise entire segments of cells, so everybody is locked down.

So far this year, Toronto South has had 220 lockdowns, 170 of them partial lockdowns, according to data provided to the Star on Friday by the Ministry of the Solicitor General.

Ministry spokesperson Kristy Denette told the Star, by email, that, since 2018, the government has trained “about 900 new correctional officers” for employment across the province, with more than 100 hired at Toronto South.

The outcome, at the other end of the pipeline, is sentences reduced on time credit. An attempt by the former Stephen Harper government to limit credit to a 1:1 ratio was unanimously quashed by the Supreme Court of Canada in 2014.

Early release on time credit infuriates victims and their families.

Last month, Christopher Husbands, convicted of manslaughter and aggravated assault in the 2012 Eaton Centre food court shooting that killed two and wounded half a dozen, received 10 years credit for 6.75 years pre-trial time served, including 669 days in administrative segregation, and taking into account the horrific conditions at the since-shuttered Don Jail.

Last summer, in but another example, specifically related to Toronto South, the judge cited “oppressive’’ conditions in sparing further jail time for a drug dealer busted after selling heroin to an undercover cop. That defendant had served just more than 200 days of pretrial custody at Toronto South and was on lockdown 38 times, each time due to staff shortages.

Again and again, lockdowns result primarily from insufficient staffing, not trouble on the units, although there’s plenty of that, and chronic absenteeism.

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Guards will apparently seize on any excuse not to report to work at a facility they loathe as much as the inmates.

A report from the province’s corrections reform advisor, issued a year ago, presented a disturbing picture of the jail: In 2017, there were 157 partial lockdowns at Toronto South and 47 full lockdowns — 60 per cent due to staff shortages. Between 2016 and 2017, the institution saw an 87 per cent jump in inmate-on-staff violence, the most for any jail in Ontario. A survey of employees revealed three-quarters didn’t feel safe at work and 58 per cent said they feared being assaulted by an inmate at least once a day.

An administrative shambles — at a facility, opened in 2014 as a model institution, heralding a progressive era of incarceration, and emphasizing rehabilitation over punishment.

At its core is what’s called “direct supervision,” a practice that places officers in the unit alongside inmates, without physical barriers, rather than stationing them to observe inmates from an enclosed glass room. That was supposed to promote mutual respect and friendly interaction. The opposite has transpired, placing guards at increased risk.

At Toronto South, corrections officers are practically begging for transfer or seeking other employment, further reducing staffing levels.

“The blunt answer is the government to date hasn’t done anything to fix Toronto South,” says Chris Jackel, himself a corrections officer and now serving as Ontario chair of the corrections division of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, which represents Toronto South corrections staff.

Toronto South has a max inmate capacity of 1,650, according to the government website. But it hasn’t been operating at capacity since 2015, with recent news reports pegging the inmate population at around 800. Under previous government guidelines, the ratio of staff to inmates was 1:16. But the problem is there aren’t enough staff on any given day to meet those guidelines, according to the union.

He points to the South West Detention Centre in Windsor as a facility where properly managed direct supervision has lowered assaults against guards and generally improved morale.

There’s a dedicated supervisor taken off-line — that staff member is dedicated fulltime to the undertaking — who “champions” the system, documenting how the jail is functioning and interactions between inmates and officers, says Jackel.

Toronto South, at one point, was on the same track — assigning three dedicated supervisors, one for each of the jail’s towers.

But the program was canceled shortly after the new Doug Ford government took office at Queen’s Park.

“A cost-saving measure, they said,” snorts Jackel.

OPSEU has repeatedly called for expanding staff at Toronto South. “Replace body for body the staff that has been lost,” says Jackel. “Then increase the staffing level to the complement that’s needed.”

As well, Jackel argues the government should appoint an oversight body to investigate problems at Toronto South, particularly with direct supervision, which “has a lot of moving pieces.”

Everybody, it seems, is dismayed and exasperated.

Says Struthers: “We have a responsibility to our fellow human beings to do better than this.”

Correction, Dec. 14, 2019: This article has been corrected from a previous version that misstated Andrew Barnes' surname as Andrews.