Napanee Council to hear cost of policing Quinte Detention Centre

All municipalities must budget for their community policing costs. Still, only some municipalities are being charged to police correctional institutions that serve the entire province --- a fact that doesn’t sit well with the Town of Greater Napanee.

At its first regular meeting of the year, to be held on Tuesday, Jan. 14, 2025, the Council of the Town of Greater Napanee will receive a report from Chief Administrative Officer Matthew Grant on Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) billing costs for the Quinte Detention Centre (QDC). The fact that the Town currently foots the bill for those costs has long been contentious. Grant’s report highlights the financial implications of policing QDC so that Council can have a better grasp of just how many taxpayer dollars are being spent there that could otherwise pay for Town needs --- especially given that these policing costs are expected to increase with the expansion of the detention centre. 

At the heart of the issue, the Quinte Detention Centre at 89 Richmond Boulevard in Greater Napanee is one of seven detention centres in Ontario that serve as the point of entry into the criminal justice system. They hold persons on remand, awaiting trial, sentencing, or other proceedings; offenders sentenced to short terms (approximately 60 days or less); and offenders awaiting transfer to a federal or provincial correctional facility. The province defines detention centres such as QDC as maximum security regional facilities “serving larger areas in Ontario.”

Opened in 1971 to replace Belleville, Kingston, Picton and Napanee’s county jails, QDC houses inmates from across eastern Ontario. Yet Greater Napanee, a lower-tier municipality, bears the financial burden of policing the centre whenever the OPP is called there. These costs are not borne by other municipalities that do not have a provincial detention centre within their municipal boundaries. 

Grant has determined through discussion with the local OPP detachment that Greater Napanee is billed for an average of 200 calls annually to the Quinte Detention Centre, according to the report. These calls included OPP services related to prisoner escort, police information, and violent crimes within the QDC, each representing a different cost to the municipality. In 2023, there were a total of 212 calls to the QDC, with the top three types of calls including:  

• Prisoner escort – 94 calls 
• Police information – 33 calls  
• Violent crimes – 34 calls 

Call levels were similar in 2024, with calls for service between January and October 2024 (the time of Grant's inquiry) totalling 169 calls. At that time, the top three types of calls in 2024 included:  

• Prisoner escort – 97 calls  
• Police information – 19 calls 
• Violent crimes – 17 calls 

“While the OPP local detachment could not give us a total cost for calls for service to the QDC,” Grant reports, “they did confirm for us that the most expensive of these calls for service, violent crimes, averaged $1,702 per individual call, which represents a significant cost for the Town of Greater Napanee.”

For just the number of violent crimes alone in 2024 at the time of Grant's inquiry, that would work out approximately $28,934.

In the fall of 2024, the Town of Greater Napanee, like municipalities across Ontario, received significant increases in its OPP contract costs. These costs resulted in an overall increase of approximately $900,000 (23 per cent) to the Town's OPP contract costs and were primarily a result of the settlement of OPP contract negotiations. Then, in November 2024, the Ministry of the Solicitor General announced it was proposing to provide relief to Ontario municipalities from those increased costs (reducing the increase charged to Greater Napanee from $928,393 to $205,594) and that it would examine options to undertake a review of the OPP billing model. 

Grant’s report notes that Town representatives have an approved delegation with the Ministry of the Solicitor General of Ontario to discuss policing costs at the Rural Ontario Municipal Association (ROMA) at the end of January: “The delegation will aim to highlight the issue of OPP calls to provincial correction centres and to request that the issue be included in the province's upcoming OPP-funding model review.” 

A key point of discussion in this delegation, according to Grant, will be costs related to the OPP calls to provincial detention facilities. His report includes a letter submitted by the Town of Greater Napanee to the deputy solicitor general, asking whether these types of calls and their associated billing will be included in the province's upcoming review of the OPP billing model for municipalities. 

Last month, the province announced a multi-million dollar expansion to Quinte Detention Centre, which will see an additional 66 beds added to the facility, bringing the total capacity to over 300. Asked about the additional costs of policing, Member of Provincial Parliament (MPP) Ric Bresee said he and the solicitor general had had many conversations about the issue. 

"He recognizes that the OPP is a provincial body that negotiates and [that] ended up in arbitration with regard to their salaries. And it ended up being quite a significant spike for the lower tier municipalities, who are not at that table," Bresee said.

"We considered a review of how we deliver the services and a recognition that the municipalities have detention centres. The municipalities with federal institutions [also] have an extra cost that they're bearing... That was part of the recognition and the reduction in billing for this year... Greater Napanee ended up with a $722,000 reduction, specifically around the increase in the contracts, but also recognized the extra cost," Bresee continued.

"It's one of those pieces that's been a historical standard of practice, if you will... but this particular reduction includes an element for that, in that Greater Napanee's reduction was a little higher than most of the other municipalities."

It should be noted that the reduction Bresee referred to has only been proposed by the provincial government at this time; it has not yet been passed.

Reached for comment following the expansion announcement, Greater Napanee Mayor Terry Richardson said, "We are excited that our provincial partners are investing in much-needed infrastructure to help keep our communities safe. That said, we will continue conversations with them to ensure that any costs incurred to police these extra beds will not adversely affect our community."

Meetings of the Council of the Town of Greater Napanee can be viewed virtually (or watched afterward) on the Napanee Town Council YouTube channel or attended in person in Council Chambers at Napanee Town Hall, 124 John Street. Further information about Council meetings, including agendas and rep