Five correctional officers have been charged with the aggravated assault of an inmate at the Toronto South Detention Centre, Toronto police say.

Police said a prisoner serving a custodial sentence at the notorious Etobicoke jail was assaulted by six correctional officers on Dec. 20, 2019.

On Friday, five men surrendered to Toronto police 11 Division and were each charged.

A sixth man is expected to be charged at a later date, police said in a press release.

Toronto police did not identify the men charged, which they nomarlly do. They have identified prison guards charged.

Akse why they had not done so in this case, Meaghan Gray spokesperson for the Toronto Police, said there is “no investigative reason to do so.”

Gray says this was an isolated incident, and they are not looking for more victims or witnesses.

“All of the people involved have been identified, and there is no threat to public safety,” she said.

The men are scheduled to appear in court on April 20.

Toronto South has been plagued with problems since it opened in January 2014. It has a maximum capacity of about 1,600 all-male inmates, but, since opening, has generally operated at about half-capacity.

Earlier this year, a judge slammed the province for failing to improve “inhumane” conditions at the facility.

In 2017, there were and 47 lockdowns and 157 partial lockdowns there. Sixty per cent were due to staff shortages, according to a report from the province’s correctional officer the following year.

In 2019, Justice John McMahon called out “absolutely unacceptable” the continuing lockdowns at Toronto South, which resulted in his reducing a sentence for an offender who’d spent time there in pre-trial custody.

“This court has and continues to see, on a daily basis, lockdown reports, because they have insufficient staff to staff the location,” he wrote in his sentencing decision.

“It results in prisoners being locked down for an inordinate amount of time.”

Provincial jails like the South are used to house people who are awaiting trial, but have not received bail, and any person who has been convicted and sentenced to a jail term of less than two years.

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The report found an increase of 87 per cent jump in violence of inmates on staff from 2016-2017, the most for any jail in the province. Three quarters of employees said they didn’t feel safe at work and nearly 60 per cent said they feared being assaulted by an inmate at least once a day.

With files from Osobe Waberi