Ontario Premier Doug Ford defended his government's plan to build many more jails, saying the billions in cost will be worth it.
Ontario's jails are well over capacity and the overcrowding has been worsening for years under Ford's tenure as premier.
The province plans to add upward of 6,000 new jail beds by 2050, government documents obtained by The Canadian Press show.
"We aren't building Four Seasons hotels for these people, they're going to jail, and again, I don't care if you stack them 10 high, these are criminals that broke the law and they're going to be held accountable," Ford said.
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About 80 per cent of inmates in provincial jails are awaiting trial and presumptively innocent. The provincial institutions hold people who are accused of a crime but not on bail, as well as those serving sentences of two years less a day. Inmates with longer sentences are housed in the federal prison system.
Jails are expensive. A new one with 375 beds under construction in Thunder Bay, Ont., comes with a price tag of $1.2 billion.
The documents also say the 1,140 jail beds the province is currently building will cost about $4 billion.
"Those billions of dollars is well invested to make sure our communities are safe," Ford said Tuesday. "And I've always said my job is to protect communities, protect the people, protect their jobs, and that's exactly what we're doing."
Ford said the plan is to continually build more jails in order to add capacity to the system.
"We want to send a message to the judges: don't hold back, send them to jail, and we're going to take care of them," he said.
The transition binder made last year for Solicitor General Michael Kerzner shows the province's three-phased plan to add thousands of jail beds to deal with a wildly overcrowded jail system.
The internal documents say there are about 2,000 more inmates in jails than there is capacity, which stands at about 8,500 beds provincewide.
The ministry said the capacity problems are "complex," but several factors are contributing to the rise, including a backlog in the court system to deal with those on remand in jail awaiting trial, inmates remaining in custody longer, bail reform and population growth.
University of Ottawa researchers obtained the binder through a recent freedom-of-information request and shared the documents with The Canadian Press.
"The province's plan should be seen for what it is — a radical, multibillion-dollar boondoggle that'll line the pockets of Premier Ford's friends in construction and the prison-industrial complex while depriving our communities of supports that actually make us safer," said Justin Piché, a criminology professor at the University of Ottawa who researches provincial jails and federal prisons.
Opposition party leaders said building more jails is not the practical or economical solution needed to ease overcrowding.
"The government has completely failed to address overcrowding in jails because of their underinvestment in our court system, and as a result, a number of hardened criminals are getting out because of it," said Green Party Leader Mike Schreiner.
Overcrowded jails, combined with correctional officer shortages, trigger lockdowns. Courts have long given those convicted of crimes more credit for lockdown days than when jails are running normally, for reasons of undue hardship. This is taken into account by judges during sentencing, which often leads to reduced sentences.
"Building more jails and putting people in jails will cost the government and taxpayers more money than if they would build supportive housing and treatment centres to help people," said Liberal justice critic Lucille Collard.
NDP Leader Marit Stiles said Ford is focusing on the wrong part of the justice system to fix.
"Our jails right now are deeply overcrowded, and that's not safe for inmates or for correctional officers," she said. "I just question why this government never seems to look at any of the upstream solutions around community safety."
She said the province needs to spend more money and resources to deal with the backlog in courts, which in turn would help ease crowding in jails.
Two years ago, The Canadian Press obtained government data that showed the province's jails were at 113 per cent capacity in 2023, with the majority of the province's institutions filled beyond capacity.
Global News recently obtained data from October 2025 that shows a marked increase in jail capacity at 130 per cent.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 15, 2026.
