All of the province’s correctional officers refused to open their prisoners’ cells on Tuesday morning, in support of their colleague beaten up by a prisoner in Sorel-Tracy last weekend.
• Also read: Sorel-Tracy prison: a prison officer severely beaten by an inmate
« The [ministère de la Sécurité publique] has blood on his hands,” we can read on a sign installed by correctional officers from the Quebec Detention Center in the morning.
Photo Marc Vallières / QMI Agency
The latter demonstrated outside the prison on Tuesday morning, with signs and sirens. Just like their colleagues elsewhere in the province, they placed the prison in lockdown until noon, which means that inmates must remain in their cells.
Photo Marc Vallières / QMI Agency
Remember that a prison guard was brutally attacked by an inmate at the Sorel-Tracy Detention Center on Sunday. Hit numerous times in the face with a weapon, the man, unrecognizable, is currently in a coma.
Kaven Plourde, the 39-year-old inmate with a long criminal record involved in this case, was transferred to Bordeaux prison while awaiting further proceedings. He was incarcerated following an assault case which dates back to last March, in Sherbrooke.
Photo Marc Vallières / QMI Agency
It is the Sûreté du Québec which is responsible for shedding light on this matter. A crime scene technician attended the scene to better understand the circumstances of the attack.
For months, the province’s correctional officers’ union has been asking the government to intervene to improve security in prison establishments. They denounce in particular the explosion of deliveries by drones and the manufacture of homemade weapons.
Upheaval in courthouses
The pressure tactics of correctional officers obviously have a major impact on the operation of courthouses in the province. No detainee can be taken before the judges for the processing of their cases, whether in person or virtually.
This therefore means that all trials involving detained individuals are on break for the morning and that the volume rooms where dates are set are also operating slowly.
In Quebec, judges who entered the room at 9:30 a.m. Tuesday morning learned of this major upheaval when they arrived on the bench. Court was suspended from 10 a.m. in certain rooms since all of the cases remaining on the day’s docket involved detained individuals.
– With the collaboration of Pierre-Paul Biron and TVA Nouvelles
