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The new jail needs to be larger because it will have a variety of units — minimum, medium and maximum security, a more capable infirmary and so on — each of which will need a little bit of slack, Lalonde’s letter says.

“Given the diverse and sometimes urgent needs of the inmate population, it has been challenging to provide each individual entering OCDC with access to the right bed, with the right supports, at the right time,” she writes. The 725-bed plan also reflects both population growth in Eastern Ontario and efforts to keep people out of jail if they don’t absolutely need to be there, the letter says — a new jail just built to keep pace with the population would need as many as 1,400 beds by 2040, according to a ministry analysis.

“The ministry will monitor the impact that our broader investments in the justice sector, health care, housing, and social supports have on projected capacity requirements. The planned capacity for this facility will be assessed throughout the planning and design process against any observed decreases in the provincial client population,” Lalonde’s letter says.

The Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre is 45 years old and too small for the number of prisoners who’ve been sent to it. Nobody was supposed to be there very long: provincial jails take prisoners awaiting trial who can’t get bail (that’s about two-thirds of provincial inmates) and convicts sentenced to less than two years.

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Rehabilitation didn’t really used to be in provincial jails’ mandate, so they weren’t built to do it. Nor were they built for inmates with drug addictions or mental-health problems. Corrections officers have routinely put ill inmates in solitary-confinement cells only because there’s simply nowhere else to send them. Mentally ill inmates have died by suicide in segregation, untreated and unwatched. The Ottawa jail has seen three suicide attempts that we know of just this month.