A senior Toronto judge says it is “absolutely unacceptable” and “unfair” that inmates are frequently subjected to full lockdowns at the South Detention Centre, which corrections staff attribute to overcrowding and chronic staffing shortages.

Superior Court Justice John McMahon made the remarks Tuesday while reducing the time a convicted drug dealer has left to serve because six of the 18 days he spent in pretrial custody were in a locked cell at the jail.

McMahon gave the man enhanced credit of about 1.75 days for each day of time served — about a month extra from his client’s three year, eight-month sentence.

The man’s defence lawyer, Calvin Rosemond, said the recurring lockdowns at the South are “horrific, it’s a human rights violation.”

“Accused people who are presumptively innocent in remand facilities do not have access to counsel, do not have access to their families, or outside influence, because they’re isolated in their cells,” he said Tuesday.

Lockdowns at the jail have become a regular occurrence because there are too many inmates for too few staff, said Warren (Smokey) Thomas, president of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, which represents correctional staff at the jail, the second largest in Canada.

“I would submit that provincial jails were never, ever, ever meant to be that big,” he said Tuesday.

On Monday, 200 employees at the Etobicoke institution refused to perform non-essential work after a group of inmates allegedly attacked guards over the weekend, Thomas said. Eight people were injured, and two are still out with concussions, he said.

The jail workers went back on the job after the Ministry of Labour ruled they had no right to refuse work, Chris Jackel, chair of OPSEU’s corrections division, said Tuesday.

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Nevertheless, “deplorable conditions” persist at the institution and at other jails around the province, Daniel Brown, a Toronto defence lawyer and a vice-president of the Criminal Lawyers’ Association, wrote in an email.

“Most inmates are presumed innocent and are treated with a level of inhumanity and cruelty that is unfathomable in modern society,” Brown wrote. “We can expect judges to continue to harshly slash jail sentences and even consider tossing cases out due to this unconstitutional and egregious conduct.”

In the Ontario legislature Tuesday, MPP Kevin Yarde, the NDP’s Corrections critic, demanded the government do something to “fix the crisis in corrections” and called on Sylvia Jones, the minister of community safety and correctional services, to commit to hiring more full-time correctional staff.

Yarde pointed to a report that found the South is one of the most violent correctional facilities in the province, and most of the violence occurred when shifts were understaffed.

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Jones replied that the weekend incident was “very serious” and the government is “actively engaged” in discussions about improving the province’s institutions.

“We’ve already made some changes that have been a positive influence, but this is not an easy ship to move,” Jones said. “There are a lot of moving parts when you’re talking about corrections and the impact that the justice file has.”