‘It was completely ignored’: This woman’s medical emergency in Ontario jail reflects broader health care crisis

Ashley Stevens has scars inside and out from her time spent in an Ontario prison.

This is not because she was involved in violent confrontations with other prisoners, but because she was a victim ofMiscarriage and then unrelated infection were suspected.

“I’ve got sepsis,” said Stevens, who was treated at an Ottawa-area hospital. “The doctor even said that if I had not come in time, I would have died.”

Earlier this year, Stevens, 30, spent four months in the Ottawa-Carleton Detention Center for domestic violence-related offenses — threats, mischief and assault. He was initially granted bail, but had to go to jail after violating the conditions.

The day she was sent to jail, she discovered that she was pregnant. This will be their fourth child.

After several weeks in captivity, she knew something was wrong.

“I kept telling the nurses that I’I’m still bleeding a lot,” she said.

Stevens said she bled for five days before being sent to the hospital, where it was confirmed she had lost the baby.

When she returned to prison, she noticed a wound on her left buttocks that was painful and swollen.

“I felt really sick, but not like pregnancy sick. I felt like I was dying and I ended up dying,” Stevens said.

She was taken back to the hospital and had surgery to remove the failed pregnancy from her uterus. While there, Stevens said a doctor told him that the wound on his buttocks had become septic.

“It was completely ignored… I was pulling my pants down, showing (correctional officers) my infection, to which the officers responded, “‘Don’t worry, just stay away from it and if it gets worse, just let us know,'” Stevens said.

She said she had little contact with prison medical staff because “to see the doctor, you are only allowed to see him once a month, and you can see him for a few seconds.”

Stevens’ Struggle to Get Care You’re NotNick. Complaints filed by prisoners have doubled over the past six years, according to CBC analysis.

‘These are not idle claims’

More than a third of the complaints received between January and June 2025 were related to health care – primarily issues related to access to doctors and nurses and medication.

“Health complaints jump off the page. These are not frivolous claims,” ​​said Justin Peay, a criminology professor at the University of Ottawa.Iche, one of Two researchers who read the CBC’s findings.

“People with health problems and mental health problems often end up behind bars. When they get there, they still need care, but it’s in short supply,” he said. “They don’t have enough staff…there aren’t enough resources for it, and the jail is not a hospital.”

while accounting Significant increase in prisoner populationComplaints rose from nine complaints per 100 prisoners in 2019 to 17 complaints per 100 prisoners in 2024.

data received As part of a larger CBC investigation It revealed Ontario’s prisons are also headed for a record year for overcrowding, remand population and lockdowns, as politicians debate bail reforms that could lead to an influx of people behind bars.

The Ontario Ministry of the Solicitor General, which is responsible for provincial correctional facilities that house prisoners with sentences of less than two years and those on remand, said it could not comment on Stevens’ case because it involves personal medical information.

In an email to CBC News, she said policies and procedures are in place to respond to situations where an inmate is in medical crisis or requires hospitalization.

“Primary care physicians in each facility are responsible for the provision of primary medical services,” the ministry said. “Inmates have access to health care practitioners such as nurses, nurse practitioners and physicians.”

Government employed medical staff declined by nearly 50%

CBC also obtained daily headcount numbers for all prisons from January 2019 to June 2025 — including corrections officers, medical staff, social workers and programming staff. (Government data does not specify whether these posts were permanent or temporary, full or part-time.)

Data show prisons hired hundreds more medical staff before and during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2019, more than 1,000 medical professionals were considered “active employees”; By 2025, this will drop to around 550.

The stats aren’t surprising for Piché. “If you talk to nurses or doctors, they’re already finding it extremely difficult to work in hospitals. They’re going to go and work in prison?”

Adam Siegler, co-chair of the Occupational Stress and Injury Subcommittee for the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU), said nurses contracted through agencies have been brought in to boost staffing levels, but it’s not enough.

Ontario prison overcrowding has increased, CBC investigation finds An increase of more than 30 percent since 2019.

“Everyone is just being run off their feet, because there are 30 per cent more people to provide services, and we don’t have the staff to be able to do that,” said Siegler, who is also a social worker at the Ontario Correctional Institution in Brampton.

In an email, the Ontario Solicitor General’s office told CBC “Correctional Capacity Has well as bThis was supported by the hiring of more than 2,500 new staff, including corrections officers, mental health counselors, nurses and other professionals.

‘We are in a health care crisis’

Dr. Louisa Marion-Bellemayre, who works in an Ontario prison, said access to health care isn’t just a problem for corrections.

“If we have a health care crisis outside of prisons or provincial corrections, there is also a crisis for health care providers inside provincial corrections,” said Marion-Bellemayre, a physician who focuses on addictions and Indigenous health.

Before building more prisons as a solution to overcrowding, Marion-Bellemayre said leaders should take a step back and look at who is currently in custody. For example, he estimates that more than 95 percent of the patients he examines in prison have substance abuse disorders and are significantly sicker than they were 20 years ago.

“They do cocaine, drink alcohol, take crystal meth and fentanyl. It’s a much more complex patient,” she said.

He said prison staff have to solve problems with limited resources.

“As health care professionals, it’s the ethical thing to do,” Marion-Bellemayre said. “Because we have limited health care resources, we must see the sickest people first.”

He also said more programs and transitional housing are needed to support people suffering from addiction and mental health problems before they go to prison.

“The solution to this problem is to keep people out of jail in the first place,” he said.

Piché says the way society views the most vulnerable is also an issue. “When we see people using drugs in public, people struggling with mental health issues… people who are homeless or camping, it makes us uncomfortable,” Piché said. “They will not receive care in cages.”

Judge acknowledged difficulty in sentencing

In April, Ashley S.Teevens pleaded guilty to some of the charges against him and was sentenced to 30 days in jail.

Stevens’ lawyer, Nevada McEnery-Hatajalo, told CBC that the judge acknowledged her client’s medical difficulties in prison when sentencing him.

“The judge saw everything I went through,” said Stevens, who has now recovered from the infection but is still recovering from the miscarriage.

the judges havee already pending cases or given short sentencesCiting a variety of conditions for detainees Ontario prisons,

“I think judges are becoming more aware of it,” said Ontario Senator Kim Pate, who is also the former executive director of the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies.

“The waiting and prison terms they face mean that sometimes judges are trying to compensate.”

Methodology: How CBC analyzed Ontario prison data Through freedom of information requests, CBC News obtained datasets from the Ontario Ministry of the Solicitor General representing prison population, prisoner complaints and daily headcount for the period January 1, 2019 to July 1, 2025. Inmate complaints in the first six months of 2025 were compared to the January 1-June 30 period of each previous calendar year (2019-2024) to ensure accurate year-over-year trends. To take into account changes in prison population, the complaint rate was calculated by dividing the total number of complaints filed in a given year by the average number of prisoners, then multiplying by 100 (complaints per 100 prisoners). The data does not mention the outcome of complaints or whether multiple complaints were filed by the same person. Originally, over 800 different reasons were cited for complaints. To facilitate analysis and visualization, complaints were divided into two main subcategories: complaints related to “health care” and complaints related to “prison operations”. All complaints related to the day-to-day operations of the prison (e.g., mail, sanitation, diet, telephone) were grouped together as “daily operations”. All drug-related complaints (eg, availability, dosage, delivery, withdrawal, method, timing) were grouped into a single “drug” category. Staffing figures were extracted from a government dataset by breaking down the daily count of “active employees” into “Medicare” status between January 1, 2019, and July 1, 2025. To determine the annual average, the CBC first determined the total number of “active” medical staff in all provincial prisons for every day of the year. Annual averages (2019–2025) were calculated from these daily totals. The data do not specify whether these positions were permanent, temporary, full-time, or part-time. The government did not provide any predetermined staffing model and said the figures were the most comprehensive response possible. Estimates of the average number of prisoners were calculated by dividing the monthly total number of days of imprisonment (“days in residence”) by the number of days in that month, a method later confirmed to be accurate by the government. Research and data compilation: Julie Ireton, CBC News (July–November 2025) Data validation and analysis: Valerie Ouellette, CBC News (October–November 2025)