A car leaves the Etablissement de detention de Montreal, referred to as the Prison de Bordeaux, on April 25.Andrej Ivanov/The Globe and Mail
More than 200 inmates, some of whom were incarcerated for violent offences, have been freed early from Quebec provincial jails by mistake in the past eight years.
Incident reports obtained by The Globe and Mail show that corrections staff, as well as court clerks and police, mixed up inmates, miscalculated sentence lengths and miscommunicated with each other, errors that led to the premature release of 175 people between January, 2015, and January, 2022. In addition to those cases, 29 others were released before they should have been, between April, 2022, and March, 2023, Ministry of Public Security spokesperson Louise Quintin said.
The Globe has previously reported that hundreds of people were illegally jailed for days to months in Quebec over the past decade because of administrative errors. An alleged victim of illegal detention is now seeking authorization to file a class-action lawsuit against the provincial government.
On May 31, a ministry official mistakenly sent The Globe 384 pages of unredacted incident reports completed by corrections administrators and staff.
On June 1, the ministry asked The Globe to destroy the reports because they contained confidential personal information as well as information relating to security, and said it would send a redacted version.
After the redacted version was sent, The Globe followed up with questions asking the ministry to justify the removals, which not only included names, but also the charges the inmates were convicted of or facing. The ministry also removed details about the cause of the incidents and their consequences for the public. Ministry official Gaston Brumatti said the redactions were justified under various dispositions of the province’s access to information legislation, but declined to address individual redactions.
The ministry also said that, because The Globe’s questions suggested the unredacted reports had not yet been destroyed, a “confidentiality incident” was reported to Quebec’s access to information commission.
The Globe is not naming individuals to protect their privacy.
While most reports show that officials realized within a day that they had freed an offender early, others note mistakes were not identified for several days or even months.
Officials scrambling to contact offenders and get them back behind bars often had phone numbers for the person or their relatives that turned out to be useless. When contact was made, some offenders were co-operative; others were not. Many of the incident reports note that authorities were still looking for the offenders when the reports were filed.
In cases where offenders were prematurely released after violent crimes, including assault and sexual assault, correctional services note they had to notify victims.
In December, 2018, a terrified victim called law enforcement herself when a man who had allegedly attacked her was supposed to be transferred to a therapy centre, but for reasons unspecified in the report, was simply freed from the Quebec City Detention Centre. He was facing charges of assault with bodily harm, uttering threats and mischief.
When they learned what happened, family members of the offender warned his victim, and she in turn contacted police, who reached out to correctional services. The man was arrested a day after his release.
In July, 2021, another man facing charges of assault, criminal harassment and forcible confinement in the context of domestic violence was supposed to be transferred to a therapy centre but instead was freed from the Amos Detention Centre, in northwestern Quebec. The mistake was only discovered a month and a half later, when police stopped the man by chance and the Crown prosecutor’s office asked correctional services why he was free.
Ms. Quintin said that “no major offence was committed by a released person between his release and the regularization of his situation,” but a report shows at least one offender paid a visit to his victims.
In September, 2018, a man was taken to the Quebec City Detention Centre after allegedly breaking and entering into his parents’ home. He was set to appear in court on two separate occasions over the following days to face these and other, unrelated charges.
After his appearance for the latter charges, he was released because correctional services staff did not check e-mails where they received an order to keep him behind bars for the breaking-and-entering incident. They only realized their mistake when the Crown prosecutor’s office contacted them after the accused returned to his parents’ home after he was freed, despite an order not to communicate with them.
Goi Hing Leung’s case is among the rare ones that have been publicized. He was incarcerated at the Montreal Detention Centre pending trial on attempted murder charges and freed by mistake on March 30, 2017, after a court clerk failed to provide documents required to keep him behind bars.
Correctional services realized what happened a week later, and Mr. Leung was brought back on April 10. He was later found guilty of attempted murder.
In March, 2015, the son of an influential member of the Hells Angels criminal group was freed after correctional officers mistook him for another prisoner with the same last name who was supposed to be released. Because the latter was not there when his name was called, only the son of the Hells Angels member appeared and correctional officers released him.
At the time the report was filed, police and correctional services were still looking for the man, who had another two months to serve for breaching conditions and uttering threats, among other charges.
In January, 2022, a woman who faced accusations of breaking and entering and assault with a weapon, among other charges, was found not criminally responsible on account of mental disorder.
She was to be transferred from the Leclerc jail for women, in Laval, to the Notre-Dame Hospital’s psychiatric ward, in Montreal, but correctional officers were not told where they should drop her off, so they left her in the emergency department, the report says.
Three days later, the hospital contacted the jail, saying the woman was never taken to the psychiatric ward and could not be found elsewhere in the hospital. Officials were still looking for her when that report was filed.
In April, 2018, a man was freed from the Saint-Jérôme Detention Centre, north of Montreal, because a correctional officer confused that day with his actual release date, exactly one year later.
The offender, detained since December, 2017, had been found guilty of various charges including assault, assault with a weapon, uttering threats, and dangerous operation of a motor vehicle.
When correctional services realized their mistake the next day, the man had already been flown to his home village of Puvirnituq, more than 1,600 kilometres north of Montreal. He was arrested and put on another plane to the Amos Detention Centre.
Sometimes, offenders who showed up by themselves to serve their sentences were denied incarceration by correctional services. A man who had to be incarcerated on weekends went to detention centres in Laval, Montreal and Sorel in April and May of 2017, and each time was denied entry because personnel could not locate his file before an official in Sorel realized her mistake.
On several occasions, the mistakes led to charges of “illegal freedom” laid against offenders when officials were unable to immediately contact them, according to the reports.
The documents also highlight that a lack of resources and technical difficulties have led to errors.
One report suggests a premature release was partly caused by overburdened staff. “It should be noted that 191 emails, totalling 267 documents, were processed on Oct. 25, 2021, by the three sentences management officers,” it says, describing how an offender was released hours after they received documents requiring his incarceration in a separate case on that day.
Another report mentions “a recurring problem with the Outlook messaging system” after documents were received by the Sorel-Tracy Detention Centre four hours after a court clerk sent them, contributing to the premature release of a detainee.
Ms. Quintin declined to answer questions on these issues because she said this information was meant to be redacted. The reports also say that staff responsible for the release errors would be asked to explain what happened and might face disciplinary measures. Ms. Quintin said the ministry does not comment on employee records but that sanctions “can range from a written warning to dismissal.”