Five correctional officers were assaulted last weekend in a medium-security unit at Springhill Institution in Nova Scotia, and the case is now under investigation. Few details about the attack have been released publicly, but union officials say the injured officers are recovering and remain shaken.
Frederick Lebeau said, “They’re doing a little bit better. It was a violent assault,” and said the union’s thoughts and prayers are with the officers and their families. He said the attack was unusual for that unit but not isolated in the wider system, adding that violence is rising across the country and that the consequences could be long lasting. “We have high rates of PTSD across our members and it’s pretty worrying what we’re seeing, those days with violence,” he said.
The Springhill assault comes as correctional officers across Canada are warning about security pressures they say are building inside prisons. Lebeau pointed to three inmate homicides in eight months at the maximum-security unit of Donnacona Institution in Quebec as part of the same pattern, and said officers are facing more drones, weapons and drugs behind bars. “We’re seeing an increase of drones, we’re seeing an increase of arms, of drugs, and at the end of the day, it’s our community that’s not safe,” he said.
He said the union is pressing for more drone detectors, better drone detectors, body scanners and more boots on the ground, and argued the government needs to put more money into correctional institutions. Lebeau also said morale at Springhill is very low after the attack. He described the work as years of repeated exposure to danger, saying officers spend “over 25, 30, 35 years of servicing people, Canadians,” while still dealing with inmates who are serving long sentences.
Nova Scotia’s correctional system tracks custody counts, admissions, costs and the over-representation of certain groups, but it does not publish figures on assaults against staff. The province’s justice department does record incidents such as assaults and drug seizures, along with offender-on-staff cases that require in-patient hospitalization, but it does not release multi-year counts or yearly rates for those incidents. That leaves the latest Springhill attack as one of the few public windows into violence inside the system, and the union says it is a warning that cannot be brushed aside.
