Overcrowding, lockdowns inside this Windsor-area jail are so persistent, it’s leading to reduced sentences

Overcrowding and frequent lockdowns due to short staffing: These are some of the conditions at the South West Detention Centre that led to a lighter sentence of a Windsor man charged with gun trafficking.

In March, Lawrence Davis was sentenced to seven years in jail after he was found guilty on gun-related charges. Davis was charged in December 2021 after he got into an argument with a man in a vehicle at a parking lot near Tecumseh Road East and Forest Glade Drive.

The heated argument turned into a gunfight — one man died, while Davis was shot in the shoulder and treated in hospital.

Without being able to prove whether Davis acted out of self-defence, first degree murder and attempted murder charges were dismissed.

But in the publicly available decision related to Davis’s probation breaches and gun-related charges, the judge says he considered the conditions the man faced during his pre-sentence custody at the South West Detention Centre (SWDC).

Those conditions included multiple lockdowns and sleeping three people to a two-person cell…

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