Provincial jails and federal prisons are indefinitely suspending visits with inmates to reduce the possible transmission of COVID-19 in correctional facilities, while offenders who are usually required to serve time on the weekend are being allowed to stay home.

“We are taking immediate action to ensure the safety of both our staff and those in our custody,” reads a statement released late Friday and attributed to both provincial health minister Christine Elliott and Solicitor General Sylvia Jones. “We all need to stay vigilant and do our part to ensure the health and well-being of all Ontarians.”

Inmates serving weekend sentences will still be required to report to their facility in order to receive a “temporary absence from custody” before they can return home.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” said Daniel Brown, a Toronto defence lawyer and vice-president of the Criminal Lawyers’ Association. He said the weekend inmates should be allowed to call-in from home. “It’s nonsensical to bring people who are potentially sick and potentially infectious to the jail simply to be told to go home.”

The province says lawyer visits will still be permitted, but Brown said he heard from several lawyers who were unable to visit their clients at the Maplehurst Correctional Complex in Milton on Saturday. A person who answered the phone at the jail on Saturday afternoon said it wasn’t clear whether lawyer visits were permitted. Spokespeople for the province couldn’t explain the discrepancy, but reaffirmed that lawyers should still be able to see their clients.

Lawyers interviewed by the Star expressed concern that inmates could be subject to more lockdowns — when they are confined to their cells, sometimes for multiple days, and all visits are cancelled — as a result of the government’s response to COVID-19.

“Jail is an isolating place at the best of times and it’s a combustible situation when prisoners are locked up for extended periods of time, which is likely what’s happening now in the jails in order to deal with the pandemic,” Brown said. “Adding to that a loss of contact with the outside world and a loss of privileges and a loss of educational programs I think it’s a recipe for disaster inside the jails.”

A spokeswoman for the province said professional visitors who deliver programming, like lawyers, will still be permitted into the jails.

Brown pointed to the fact more than two-thirds of inmates in Ontario’s jails are awaiting trial and legally innocent, and he said the province should look closely at who they might be able to release. “There are safety precautions that are necessary in the circumstances, but perhaps the greater issue is examining who actually needs to be in jail right now,” he said.

In federal prisons, inmates can have video visits with family members, the Correctional Service of Canada said. “We are taking steps so that our institutions and offices continue to be safe and prepared,” reads a statement issued late Friday. “CSC has dedicated health-care services in our institutions and thorough procedures in place to handle cases of influenza and other respiratory illnesses, such as COVID-19.”

But Lisa Kerr, a law professor at Queen’s University who works with the Queen’s Prison Law Clinic, said in an email that CSC’s response to the pandemic has been “extremely limited.”

“We have seen nothing more than the standard direction to wash hands along with this cancellation of inmate visits,” she wrote. “While at first glance it does seem to make sense to limit the introduction of illness from the community, there are hundreds of staff members who will have to continue to come and go on a daily basis.”

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Like Brown, Kerr said more needs to be done and a “bolder approach” would be to consider conditional releases for inmates in minimum security, as well as temporary absences, work releases and, in some cases, compassionate releases.

“These mechanisms are already available in law, and would free up space and resources for the staff and inmates who will remain inside these institutions for weeks to come.”