Q
& A: How Are Women With Disabilities Discriminated Against?
Historically, women
have been over-represented in psychiatric facilities and under-represented
in the prison system. However, with the closure of psychiatric institutions
and increasingly overtaxed and under-resourced community based services,
Canada is now witnessing a marked increase in the number of women
with cognitive and mental disabilities who are being criminalized.
CSC (Correctional
Services Canada) research about women in prison indicates that, according
to their research, women prisoners have a significantly higher incidence
than the general population of mental disability including schizophrenia,
major depression, substance use disorders, psychosexual dysfunction,
and antisocial personality disorder. In addition, imprisoned women
have a much higher incidence of a history of childhood sexual abuse
and severe physical abuse than women in the general population. Among
Aboriginal women, who are disproportionately represented in the federal
prison system, 90% reported physical abuse and 61% reported sexual
abuse.
Women are often coerced into "treatment" and may also
be involuntarily transferred to segregated maximum security units
in men's prisons, and occasionally to psychiatric facilities in
a manner which clearly interferes with their human rights and Charter
protected rights at all levels, including those that are part of
international human rights obligations and commitments.
Women with mental
health problems are over-classified as maximum security prisoners
and are frequently subjected to time in the segregation units. In
spite of clear recommendations by Madam Justice Louise Arbour on the
need for much more restricted use of administrative segregation, the
Correctional Service of Canada has not accepted or implemented these
recommendations.
CSC employs therapeutic models which CAEFS, along with mental health
specialists, believe are inappropriate in a prison setting. The
ability to make informed choices and freely consent to medical and/or
therapeutic interventions is hampered by the prison environment.
So much so, that some doctors refuse to work within prisons as they
do not believe prisoners are provided with sufficient autonomy to
make informed decisions about their medical and/or therapeutic treatment.
Medical confidentiality is not ensured and women routinely stress
the fact that correctional staff often refuse to allow them to consult
in confidence with physicians and specialists when they do exit
the prison for special medical treatments.
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