Justice Minister Tom Marshall said reorganization of the province's decrepit jails has already begun. (CBC)

Newfoundland and Labrador's justice minister says the province's beleaguered jails, including a main facility that opened its creaking gates in 1859, will no longer be neglected.

Tom Marshall, who released a damning report on the province's corrections system on Monday, said government is dedicating resources to ensure full implementation of a report that chronicled weak leadership, crumbling jails, weak security and dangerous conditions for staff and inmates alike.

"This year I'm hoping that this report will now focus the attention of the people of this province finally on corrections, and that it's not something to be swept under the rug," Marshall said Monday.

"It's not something [government will] continue to ignore."

The report, titled Decades of Darkness: Moving Towards the Light, lays out 77 recommendations on cleaning up the province's jails, from providing meaningful rehabilitation programs — for many inmates, there had been none — to providing guards with better protection when they escort inmates to court.

A lobby for better jails has been underway for years. Marshall notes that concerns have been brought to government over the years by the auditor general, the office of the Citizens' Representative, unions, mental health advocates, staff and inmates themselves.

To help deliver better programs to inmates and staff, the government is reaching out to community-based groups, including the Canadian Mental Health Association. Geoff Chaulk, executive director of the CMHA's Newfoundland and Labrador division, said guards are among those who have asked for more resources and training.

"Many of them needed more support, needed to be shored up with more support, understanding the different mental illnesses and how do you better communicate with someone who you think might be experiencing an illness," Chaulk told CBC News.

Government may have been too hasty: critic

The government fired the superintendent of prisons the same day it received the prisons report, with its calls for an overhaul of how jails are managed and should operate.

John Scoville was fired as the superintendent of prisons in October when government received an often critical report. (CBC)

At the house of assembly Monday, Marshall was questioned over the Oct. 1 firing of John Scoville.

Justice critic Kelvin Parsons noted, however, that the report calls for a committee to deal with organizational issues of the prisons. Parsons said government should have waited before dismissing anyone. Days after firing Scoville, government also replaced assistant superintendent Mary Aylward.

"Did you not put the cart before the horse here?" said Parsons. "Was it premature [to have acted] without having gone through the recommendation process of getting a committee to help you out with that issue?"

Marshall said the government's goal is to let the new report do for the corrections system what the 2006 report of the Lamer commission did for the criminal justice system.

"There comes a time when any institution, any large organization, requires leadership renewal," Marshall said.

"And I think the results of the report, the recommendations of the report, indicate that this would be an appropriate time for a new direction."

Superintendent didn't have enough experience: report

At a news conference Monday, Marshall refused to discuss Scoville's firing.

Passages of a lengthy report on Newfoundland and Labrador's prisons were blacked out. (CBC)

Marshall also said privacy and security issues prevented discussion of passages of the report that had been blacked out.

However, when the government posted the report online, the redacted sections could be read by users with basic computer tools.

Among other things, the passages show that the panel investigating the prisons found that Scoville — who became superintendent of prisons in 2000 — did not have enough experience to have taken on the job.

The report, though, noted that Scoville had trouble getting the support he needed from the provincial government, and found that Scoville was left with the "seemingly insurmountable challenge of trying to move the provincial prison system into the new century."

Other passages of the report that had been blacked out from public view concern what appears to have been a toxic working environment in the prisons system, particularly at Her Majesty's Penitentiary in St. John's.

The oldest parts of Her Majesty's Penitentiary in St. John's date back to 1859. (CBC)

Staff accused Scoville of running a "dictatorship" in which employees were continually disrespected.

While Scoville explained to the panel that he wanted to surround himself with "the most capable managers," the report's authors found that "staff were left with the impression that this was nepotism at its best."

Other blacked-out portions of the report highlight weaknesses with security.

Even the areas that had been left alone, though, point out serious problems, from unsafe working conditions, inappropriate and inadequate programs for inmates, and conflict in how to improve standards.

The report depicted harrowing scenes involving both inmates and guards. While inmates reported a culture in which beatings were far from infrequent — one described what are called "elevator beatings," in which an inmate is taken from his cell to a waiting elevator — the report also detailed how correctional officers have clamoured for change, without success.

Carol Furlong, president of the Newfoundland and Labrador Association of Public and Private Employees, said the report backs up what NAPE has been saying for years on behalf of guards and correctional officers.

"This has been an area of complete and total frustration for correctional officers — the whole labour management field," Furlong said Tuesday.

'That whole place needs a full makeover': ex-inmate

Rick Anthony, an ex-convict who spent more than three years at HMP, said managers are only one problem at the aging prison, where only some living quarters were built in living memory.

"That whole place needs a full makeover," said Anthony.

"As far as I'm concerned in my mind — and I've thought it for years — that place needs to be flattened, and a new institution built with correctional officers trained, the same as the training that's coming with police officers and different things."

Indeed, the Newfoundland and Labrador government intends to replace HMP with a new prison that would involve the federal government. There are no federal prisons in Newfoundland and Labrador, although inmates serving federal time are frequently assigned to cells within the province.

Furlong, meanwhile, said things seem to be changing for the better in the last two months.

"We've been working to try and improve that relationship. We've already had meetings where we resolved many of the outstanding grievances, for example," Furlong said.

The report was prepared by a three-member panel, consisting of:

• Simonne Poirier, a retired warden of Dorchester Penitentiary in New Brunswick.
• Gregory Brown, who has held senior corrections positions in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.
• Terry Carlson, a former executive director of the John Howard Society in St. John's.

Carlson has agreed to lead a team that will implement the report's recommendations.

Marshall said government has accepted, in principle, the 77 recommendations in the report, although he cautioned that some are dependent on budget and collective bargaining issues.