Provincial Correctional Use of Force Incident Reports

Open Canada hosts data on use of force incidents within Ontario's provincial adult correctional institutions. The dataset is compiled by the Government of Ontario from its Incident Report Management system and was last updated in February 2026. It was created to support analysis under the Anti-Racism Act, 2017.

Use Cases

• Analyze correlations between inmate demographic features from the linked Adult Inmate Profile dataset and use of force incident rates.
• Model temporal trends in incident frequency using the reporting calendar year field.
• Audit for racial disparities by cross-referencing incident type 'use of force' with identity-based data fields.
• Profile institutional risk factors by joining data on correctional institution locations with incident reports.

Strengths

• Data is extracted from the official Incident Report Management (IRM) system used for operational reporting.
• Designed for specific Anti-Racism Act (ARA) reporting, with a published technical report detailing methodology and scope.
• Linked to related datasets (Adult Inmate Profile, institution locations) for enriched analysis.

Limitations

• Specific row count, column details, and temporal coverage range are not provided in the available metadata.
• Scope is limited to provincial adult correctional institutions in Ontario, not federal or youth facilities.
• Analysis requires careful interpretation as noted in the supporting technical report on data limitations.

Provenance

Source

Government of Ontario, extracted from the Incident Report Management (IRM) system.

Collection Method

Extracted from all Inmate Incident Reports (IIRs) in IRM tagged with 'use of force' as an incident type for a given reporting calendar year.

Time Range

Reporting calendar year (specific years not stated).

Freshness

Updated periodically, with a last update recorded in February 2026.

Geography

Provincial adult correctional institutions in Ontario, Canada.