Incarcerated men and women call it ‘the hole’. The Canadian
news media often adopts the American terminology of ‘solitary confinement’.
Either way, the correctional practice of segregating prisoners has become an
ever-present news story and national debate since the tragic and high profile death
of nineteen-year-old Ashley Smith in Grand Valley Institution for Women
(Kitchener, ON), in 2007.
Smith’s death, which an Ontario Coroner’s jury found
to be a homicide, provided vivid visual evidence of life inside a segregation cell and the
devastating effects isolation can have on the individual’s mental health and
emotional well-being. The coroner’s inquest concluded by making 104
recommendations, including the abolition of indefinite segregation,
which the federal government refuses to do.
The most common concerns critics raise about segregation practices
centre on the damaging mental health effects of time spent isolated –
including self-harm and suicide, the growing frequency of the use of
segregation, the lengthy periods of time some prisoners are sentenced to spend
segregated, and the over-representation of Indigenous men and women in
segregation cells across the country. Indicative of the racialization of
segregation practices, Aboriginal prisoners constituted 31% and Black prisoners comprised 10% of all segregation cases in 2011-2012.
The Correctional Service of Canada uses two related security
classifications to describe the practice of isolating individual prisoners.
Disciplinary segregation is the status designated to those prisoners who breach
an institutional rule or act violently toward staff or other prisoners; as the
name suggests, it is a form of punishment legally sanctioned by the Corrections and Conditional Release Act
and set out in Commissioner’s Directive 580.
An individual may be sentenced to a period of up to thirty days in disciplinary
segregation, unless s/he is already serving a period of segregation for another
serious offence, in which case the adjudication committee will determine
whether the two periods are to be served concurrently or consecutively. If the
sanctions are to be served consecutively, the total period of segregation
imposed may not exceed 45 days.
According to the Office of the Correctional Investigator,
2.2% of all admissions to segregation during 2011-2012 were for disciplinary
reasons and the remaining 97.8% were for administrative reasons.
It is important to point out that this is a simple linguistic difference given that
prisoners segregated for administrative and disciplinary reasons occupy the
same cells and experience the same types of restrictions – for example, with
respect to accessing programs, communicating with other prisoners, and the
inability to experience more than one hour outside their cell a day. However, prisoners who are segregated for administrative reasons may remain in isolation for exceptionally lengthy periods of time – with institutional and regional reviews
conducted after five, thirty, and then after each sixty days that pass.
This review practice has allowed the CSC to house prisoners in segregation for
over one, two, and in Smith’s case even three hundred consecutive days.
Segregation is the third most frequent grievance issue prisoners cite after health care and conditions of confinement.
An individual may be sent to administrative segregation when they are
considered to be a risk or threat to the safety and security of the
institution, including to staff and/or other prisoners, or to the integrity of
an investigation. There is, however, much concern about what the Correctional
Service considers to be risky behaviour. For example, it is especially
problematic that prisoners are segregated for engaging in self-injury, a
troubling policy response given that isolation is known to increase both the
frequency and severity of different forms of self-harm (Kilty 2006; Liebling 1992,
2011; Liebling et al. 2005; OCI 2014). This fact was clearly exemplified in
the Smith case (Kilty 2014; Sapers 2008). While the Correctional Service of
Canada is definitive that administrative segregation is not a punitive measure
(http://www.csc-scc.gc.ca/text/plcy/cdshtm/709-cd-eng.shtml#AnnexB),
decades of empirical evidence demonstrates that incarcerated men and women
understand it to be a form of punishment (Jackson 1983; Kilty 2012; Liebling 1992,
2011; Martel 2000, 2006; OCI 2013; Sapers 2008).
Under the leadership of the Conservative Government of Canada the number of men and women admitted to segregation has steadily increased since 2006, from 7477 in 2006-2007 to 8221 in 2012-13.
There are approximately 850 federal prisoners housed in segregation units at any given time, 44% of whom are segregated for thirty days or less while 16.5%
are segregated for more than 120 days.
These facts happen to coincide with the dramatic increase in the number of self-injurious incidents amongst federally sentenced women during the same time period, which rose from 29 in 2006-7 to 323 in 2012-13.
There were 901 self-injurious incidents in total during 2012-2013.
Isolating an individual who is clearly in emotional distress
is widely panned by academics, practicing social workers, psychologists,
psychiatrists and other medical professionals for aggravating suffering and
damaging the possibility for a positive therapeutic relationship between the
individual prisoner and frontline staff members. As recently as December 2014, the
Canadian Medical Association Journal published an editorial stating that the
isolation and lack of stimulation experienced while in segregation can lead to mental
health distress and anger which then increases the risk of self-harm and
suicide. The aforementioned Ashley Smith case and the death of Edward Snowshoe in 2010, a First Nations man who hung himself after serving 162
days in segregation, demonstrate this fact.
Despite calls from international regulatory bodies including
the United Nations and Amnesty International,
the federal government refuses to abolish the use of segregation for mentally
ill prisoners, stating instead that their focus is on the victims of crime, as
though it is a choice between the two. Subsequently, on January 19th
2015 the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association and the John Howard
Society of Canada filed a joint lawsuit against the Attorney General of Canada
to challenge the use of segregation in Canadian prisons. The lawsuit alleges
that segregation constitutes cruel and unusual punishment as it increases suffering, is linked to suicidal behaviour, and is discriminatory toward both
mentally ill and Aboriginal prisoners. One week later, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association and the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies filed a similar petition in Ontario Superior Court.
Canadian
courts have overturned a number of the punitive laws drafted by this particular
government, which led the Macdonald-Laurier Institute to name the Supreme Court of Canada the 2014 “Policy Maker of the Year”. While only time will tell whether the lawsuits in British Columbia and
Ontario will successfully see the abolition of segregation in Canadian prisons,
the increasing collective voice of men and women speaking publically about
their horrific experiences in long-term isolation will hopefully sensitize the
public to the damages this practice holds for incarcerated men and women, their
families, correctional staff, and even the public. For one thing is certain,
long-term segregation offers no redeeming qualities that will help
to ensure the protection and safety of the public.
BACK TO THE MARCH 2015 EDITION OF TCPC-CANADA
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