Provincial jail loosens rules on inmate phone calls after OmbudsPEI questions

People being held at P.E.I.'s provincial jail will now be able to make phone calls to anyone they want, as long as they are not blocked by court orders, after an intervention by the Island's ombudsperson's office. 

OmbudsPEI sent out a statement about the new policy on Tuesday.

The office, led by Ombudsperson Sandy Hermiston, said it had been receiving complaints for more than two years about the Provincial Correctional Centre allowing inmates to call only a few approved telephone numbers, with requests for additions taking more than a week to go through screening by provincial Probation Services and Victim Services staff. 

"During the resolution process, we learned that P.E.I. was the only province in Canada to limit inmate telephone contact in this way," OmbudsPEI said in the news release.

"Every other province permitted inmates to call anyone they wished — except for numbers blocked by the centre for safety and security reasons or when there was a legal requirement to block contact."

The news release noted that the correctional centre typically limited calls to the inmate's close family members, their lawyers, and offices like OmbudsPEI. 

"The inmates complained that limiting telephone contact made it difficult to arrange pre-trial release plans," the watchdog's office said. "It also prevented inmates from maintaining personal and professional relationships which would help them successfully reintegrate into society and establish support systems prior to their release."

The federal correctional system also has approved contact lists for its inmates, the office noted, but "contacts are not limited to close family and the number of contacts permitted per inmate is considerably higher."

The Prince Edward Island policy had been in place because of "numerous cases where inmates had breached court orders and/or contacted victims or witnesses to threaten or coerce them," provincial jail officials had told the ombudsperson's office, according to the news release. 

The OmbudsPEI statement said anyone receiving an unwanted call from an inmate has the power to decline or block future calls coming from the inmate phones at the correctional centre.