Ontario to expand jail capacity by 2,500 beds over 10 years at a cost of $3 billion

The Maplehurst Correctional Complex is shown in Milton, Ont., on Friday, March 8, 2024. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette

TORONTO — Ontario will expand its vastly overcrowded jails by 2,500 beds over the next 10 years at a cost of $3 billion to the taxpayers, the province's solicitor general said Thursday.

Michael Kerzner said the province will build new jails, expand current ones and reopen a few that have closed in Walkerton, Ont., and Brampton, Ont.

It will add 255 beds by November 2026 as part of its "bed optimization project" and hire 700 new correctional officers, he said.

"We're building and we're modernizing facilities so correctional staff have the space, tools and resources they need to do their job safely and effectively, while making sure we have the capacity now and well into the future to take to keep dangerous criminals off our streets and behind bars where they belong," Kerzner said.

The province plans to use modular components to build some jails and will use tensile structures for others in an effort to keep costs down.

The news is part of the provincial government's grander plans to vastly increase jail capacity, first revealed by The Canadian Press last month. Internal government documents show the province aims to add nearly 6,000 jail beds by 2050, a move critics estimate will cost at least $7 billion.

Meanwhile, recent data obtained through freedom-of-information laws show the average jail capacity for 2025 across all institutions is at 127 per cent.

Government data show there were, on average, 11,058 inmates inside provincial jails in 2025, with an average jail capacity for 8,676 inmates.

Jails have become more crowded every year since 2020, when the system was at 80 per cent capacity, the data show. Numbers increased even as institutions sought to balance public safety with efforts to curb the spread of COVID-19, which wreaked havoc in long-term care homes, jails and homeless shelters.

Average capacity across the jail system reached 100 per cent in 2022, then 112 per cent in 2023, followed by 122 per cent in 2024, the data show.

A spokesman for Kerzner said that as of April 1, 81 per cent of the inmates in jails were awaiting trial and presumptively innocent.

Provincial institutions hold people who are accused of a crime but have not been released on bail, as well as those serving sentences of less than two years. Inmates with longer sentences are housed in the federal prison system.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 14, 2026.

Liam Casey, The Canadian Press