What Does the Database Tell Us About Deaths in Custody Across Canada? Provinces/Territories, Jurisdictions & Institutions

By: Alexander McClelland, Jeffrey Bradley, & Lindsay Jennings

Last year, 2023, on August 10th for Prisoners’ Justice Day, the Tracking (In)Justice project launched the first comprehensive online memorial of people who have died in custody across Canada. The memorial is one step to address a context where deaths in custody are not acknowledged, tracked or documented in a consistent way across Canada, leaving little information available to the public.

This year, 2024, our team is working to further address this gap in understanding, as we launch the first online, publicly available database of deaths in custody across Canada since the year 2000. We hope this new database enables communities, academics, journalists, advocates, and criminal justice workers to access information on deaths in custody in ways previously not possible, so we are collectively able to understand systemic issues and patterns, to help support calls for change, transparency and accountability. To watch our launch event hosted on August 9, 2024, click here.

As of Prisoners’ Justice Day, 2024, the database currently includes 2,131 deaths in custody across Canada since the year 2000. Due to limited access to information, this is a bare minimum of the total number of deaths in custody over the past 24 years. As this is a living database, our team will update the data on an ongoing basis when more information about deaths becomes available. This is an initial analysis, which will be further developed over the coming months.

Interpreting these findings

Until more analysis can be conducted, we urge caution in interpreting the database findings as a real world understanding of deaths in custody across Canada. But as this is the largest dataset on deaths in custody ever created in Canada, and our data sources are mostly directly from government sources, we believe the data can give us a strong indication of potential trends which warrant further investigation.

Provinces & territories

There are more deaths in provinces which have higher populations of incarcerated people, inclusive of prisoners in federal, provincial and territorial jurisdiction. When examining deaths in custody by each geographic province or territory, inclusive of all jurisdictions, Ontario has the highest number of deaths in custody within the database, with 731. Quebec has 482 deaths, followed by British Columbia with 288, Alberta with 227, New Brunswick with 108, Saskatchewan with 106, Manitoba with 98, Nova Scotia with 35, Newfoundland with 23, Nunavut with 9, the Yukon with 6, the Northwest Territories with 4, Prince Edward Island with 2, and 12 unknown.

Institutions

To date, the following institutions and police forces have had the highest number of deaths of people in their custody across Canada:

Federal custody:

Millhaven Institution, Bath, Ontario: 58 deaths in custody
Pacific Institution, Abbotsford, British Columbia: 52 deaths in custody
Stony Mountain Institution, Stony Mountain, Manitoba: 48 deaths in custody
Kingston Penitentiary, Kingston, Ontario: 48 deaths in custody (institution now closed)
Archambault Institution, Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines, Quebec: 48 deaths in custody

Provincial custody:

Maplehurst Correctional Complex, Milton, Ontario: 45 deaths in custody
Hamilton-Wentworth Detention Centre, Hamilton, Ontario: 35 deaths in custody
Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre, Ottawa, Ontario: 28 deaths in custody
Edmonton Remand Centre, Edmonton, Alberta: 27 deaths in custody
Elgin-Middlesex Detention Centre, London, Ontario: 25 deaths in custody
Central North Correctional Centre, Penetanguishene, Ontario: 25 deaths in custody

Police custody:

Royal Canadian Mounted Police, across Canada: 145 deaths in custody
Ontario Provincial Police, across Ontario: 15 deaths in custody
Edmonton Police Service, Edmonton Alberta: 13 deaths in custody
Toronto Police Service, Toronto, Ontario: 10 deaths in custody
Prince Albert Police Service, Prince Albert, Saskatchewan: 7 deaths in custody

Of note, 33 people have died in custody in the Regional Psychiatric Centre, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, and 16 people have died in Toronto South Detention Centre, Etobicoke, Ontario, which has only been open since 2014.

Jurisdictions and types of custody

In the database, from 2000 to 2024, there are a total of 279 deaths in police custody (13.1%), 531 deaths in provincial/territorial custody (24.9%), of which 328 were incarcerated on remand, meaning they had not yet been to trial or bail. Furthermore, there are 749 deaths in federal custody (35.1%), and 494 deaths where our team did not have enough information to determine the jurisdiction (23.2%). In the database, there are also 77 deaths that occurred in jurisdictions that we deemed Other, which include hospitals (59 deaths), community corrections and/or youth facilities (13 deaths), and healing lodges (5 deaths).

How can people use the database?

People can search the database using the variables on our website’s Explore the Data page to create their own analysis. For example, to get a snapshot of how many people have died in each institution, you can search the deaths by institution in which they occurred. Or, to understand patterns over time, you can search by date, and manner of death, or other factors such as gender, or type of custody. Custom searches are available for download via the Excel or CSV file button function on the Explore the Data page.