‘We’re shoulder to shoulder’: COVID-19 safety measures lacking at Montreal jail says Mohawk man – APTN News
Apr 19, 2022
Lifting of restrictions means people convicted of minor crimes head back behind bars.
It’s been almost a month since Quebec lifted most of its pandemic restrictions – and while most of the population is venturing out again, there’s one group now under government order to return to confinement in close quarters.
“It was kind of a very rapid change,” explained Nadia Golmier, a lawyer working with inmates detained in facilities both in and around the Montreal area. Those people that were doing their weekends – serving their weekends at home – were ordered very rapidly to go back to jail to do their sentence.
“I’ve seen in those cases that, unfortunately, maybe it was not really that well managed.”
Back in March 2020, Quebec’s Public Security Ministry granted a temporary COVID-19 exception for detainees who were “intermittently sentenced,” or sentenced to serve weekends.
