An Ontario correctional officer says he may be disciplined for tweeting about a mentally ill inmate who was allegedly left in his own filth in solitary confinement.

Chris Jackel, a guard at the Central North Correctional Centre in Penetanguishene, Ont., told The Globe and Mail he has no regrets about drawing attention to the issues of mental illness and jail segregation.

On May 4, Jackel recounted on Twitter a conversation with a manager at the maximum-security jail, alleging indifference to the plight of a segregated inmate who “has been covered in feces for 8 days.”

On May 8, he tweeted that the inmate was still in the same cell, “still eating his own feces.”

Jackel told The Globe that disciplinary proceedings against him allege he violated the Ontario Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services’s code of conduct, the Ontario Public Service social media guidelines and a set of ethical principles for correctional workers. He expects to find out whether and how he will be reprimanded in a few weeks.

Richard Dionne, the president of OPSEU Local 369, which represents employees at the Central North Correctional Centre, said the inmate Jackel tweeted about was “by far one of the most extreme cases we’ve seen.”

Dionne told CTV News that both the inmate and his solitary cell were covered in feces, but that management had “no answers” when prison guards asked to remove the individual from the cell to get him cleaned up.

“It’s frustrating to know that Mr. Jackel had to go to social media to get attention for this individual in question, to get him the help he was in dire need of,” Dionne said.

“It’s frustrating for sure to know that he did it with all good intentions and now they are trying to hold him accountable for something they feel was inappropriate, meanwhile that was the only avenue that he sort of had left to reach out.”

On May 10, Jackel also tweeted a photo of a filthy prison cell in which he said a mentally ill inmate lived for more than two weeks.

Dionne said that was an old photo, unrelated to the inmate Jackel initially tweeted about, but it nevertheless represents a daily reality for correctional officers.

“The individual that the tweets were made about is definitely not a common occurrence,” Dionne said. “But mental health issues within our workplace, provincially, locally, it’s all been festering.”

Brent Ross, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services, told CTVNews.ca that the ministry would not discuss Jackel’s case because “these are confidential human resources matters between the employer and the employee.”

But in addressing the issue with reporters on Wednesday, Minister of Community Safety and Correctional Services Marie-France Lalonde said the Ontario government has “a lot of work to do in improving our correctional system.”

“When I hear descriptions like the one brought forward recently, it concerns me,” she said. “I take my responsibility to improve the conditions in our system and to ensure the safety of our staff and inmates very seriously.” 

Lalonde noted that Ontario’s independent adviser on corrections reform, Howard Sapers, called for changes to prison segregation practices in May.

“We expect his final report in the fall to inform our approach to long-term reform of the corrections system,” she said. “We have already taken strong action to change segregation practices, and are making ongoing investments to increase staff and mental health supports for those in our custody and care.

With files from CTV's Peter Akman