Women in Prison - CAEFS’ Fact Sheets

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CAEFS’ Fact Sheets

Human and Fiscal Costs of Prison

72% per cent of provincially and 82% of federally sentenced women have been physically or sexually abused in the past; 62% of women serving time for “violent offences” committed the least serious type of common assault, usually against a partner by whom they were sexually abused in the past.

2/3 of federally sentenced women have children and are more likely than incarcerated men to be responsible for the child’s primary care.

In 2001, 82% of women in prison were serving their first federal sentence.

In July 2003, 75% of women serving time were doing so for minor offences such as shoplifting and fraud; drug related offences accounted for more than a third of women in federal prison

The number of women in federal prisons increased by 30% from 646 in 1995 to 849 in 2000.

Aboriginal women are disproportionately incarcerated, with 60% serving their time in prison.

Canada imprisons young people at twice the rate that the United States, at 10-15 times the rate of European countries and at four times the rate than we imprison adults.

In 2001, 123 of every 100,000 Canadians were imprisoned; this is well above the Western world average; there is no research that shows that putting more people behind bars lowers crime rates.

The use of segregation in prisons has increased in the past few years. In 1999/2000 there were 238 documented admissions into segregation, and in 2001/2002 there were 418 documented admissions.

In 1999-2000, federal and provincial expenditures in the area of prisons reached $2.4 billion. This was a 5% increase over the previous year, and less than a quarter of the total amount was spent on community supervision programs.

The cost of maintaining a male prisoner in 1999-2000, was about $185.44/day or $67,686/year, whereas in 1999-2000, the cost of maintaining a woman prisoner was about $316.34/day or $115,465/year.

The cost of alternatives to prison, such as probation, bail supervision and community supervision work orders, range from $5 to $25 per day.

In 2000, the Correctional Service of Canada staff totalled 14,000 employees; 82% of the staff were employed within institutions as correctional officers, program administrators, and health care workers; only 8% were involved in community supervision.

In 2003, the Auditor General of Canada reported that the cost of keeping women in prison for 2 years or more was $57 million; they also pointed out that the Correctional Service of Canada was not able to identify how much of the $13 million allocated for ‘reintegration’ was actually spent in the community.

In 2002-02, 42% of women in federal prison, compared to 31% of women in 1997-98, were not being released until their statutory release dates, so they were not being released earlier on parole.

The gap between the rich and the poor in Canada is widening and needs to be reduced to allow for the economic changes necessary for the well being of our communities, particularly Aboriginal communities.

Women and Self-Harm

Self-injury is at least three times more frequent amongst women in the general population; the average rate of self-mutilation within penitentiaries is almost twice the estimated rate than in the overall population of Canada.

Slashing and other forms of self-injury are generally understood to be a means of release/relief from distress and most women in prison who self-injure have histories of childhood sexual and physical abuse.

59% of federally sentenced women have reported that they have engaged in self-injurious behaviour. 92% reported they had slashed themselves, with razors, knives or other items. Although women in prison should not be punished for self-injury or suicide attempts, they continue to express reluctance to self-report for fear of reprisal and punishment.

A common response to women's emotional reactions to incarceration is the use of segregation (a situation whereby the prisoner is isolated from the general population and generally locked in her cell 23 hours a day). Those who are suicidal or who have mental disabilities are often isolated, deprived of clothing and placed in stripped/barren cells.

Suicide rates in prisons are more than twice as high as in the general Canadian population.

Between December 1988 and the spring of 1992, 7 women committed suicide at P4W. Six were First Nations women and the seventh was the first woman declared a “dangerous offender” and sentenced to an indeterminate sentence. In February 1996, another woman committed suicide at P4W after being advised that she would no longer have visits with her children. In November 1998, two women killed themselves at the Joliette Institution. In 2000, an Aboriginal women committed suicide in the segregated maximum security unit for women in the Saskatchewan Penitentiary (a men’s prison) despite being under “suicide watch”. In 2003, a woman committed suicide in while under psychiatric care at the Grand Valley prison for women in Kitchener.

Importance of Community Options

The Canadian criminal justice system is based on a retributive model of justice, where our focus is increasingly on identifying someone to blame and punish. Little effort is devoted to identifying, much less addressing, the needs and/or losses of the “victim”, the “offender” or the community

Current approaches to addressing crime, such as increasing prohibitions, developing ever more penalties and increasing the use of mandatory minimum sentences, results in longer, more damaging and expensive imprisonment in Canada.

The unravelling of social and health services and programs and, therefore, the basic support systems for Canadian women, combined with a reliance on the use of penalties and imprisonment, are resulting in an increase in the criminalization of Canadian women and children.

Women represent 70% of the world's poor population and represent only 1% of the world's wealthy.
• 19% of Canadian women live below the poverty line; 33% are Aboriginal women, 25% are women with a disability, and 28% are visible minority women.

Canada has the 5th largest wage gap between men and women workers out of the world’s 29 most developed countries; overall, women earn 73% of what men earn, based on full-time work.

Women and youth account for 83% of Canada’s minimum wage workers. Children make up 37% of people dependent on social assistance for survival.

In 2001, The National Council of Welfare set the average poverty line for a family with two children at $19,759. The average income of a single parent, on welfare, with one child was $12,244. Accordingly, 54% of single mothers live in poverty and single mothers under the age of 25 have a poverty rate of 93.3%. Although single mothers with children under the age of 18 make up 7.1% of all families, they account for 28.4% of families living in poverty.

By keeping women poor, we are also keeping children poor, causing illness, limiting their potential and perpetuating the cycle of poverty. Canada needs to implement a minimum wage that reflects the actual cost of living and develop realistic welfare rates based on actual market rates.

Current welfare rates across Canada are criminally low. Moreover, increasing numbers of people are being dumped permanently from social welfare. Many women on the social and economical margins struggle to survive; their survival is increasingly criminalized in the context of the increased feminization and criminalization of poverty.

Women in Prison

The fastest growing prison population worldwide is women, and in particular, racialized, young, poor women and women with mental health disabilities. The increasing numbers of women in prison is clearly linked to the evisceration of health, education, and social services.

Most of the women who are imprisoned are considered by correctional authorities to pose a very low risk to public safety, but they often considered very need as a result of their levels of marginalization and oppression; correctional authorities tend to address needs that are not met by considering them as risk factors

Women in prison who are seen as “high needs” (i.e. requiring treatment for sexual/physical abuse, employment training and education) are also classified as “higher risk”. Accordingly, Aboriginal women and women with mental health and/or cognitive disabilities are disproportionately over-classified – a reality which underscores the manner in which the criminal justice system exacerbates systemic and inherent inequalities.

In 2003, 36% of women were classified as maximum security upon entry into the prison; 64% of women were so classified as a result of subsequent re-classification.

35% women in provincial/territorial prisons have a grade 9 education or less and 40% have been classified as illiterate; 80% of women in federal prisons were unemployed at the time of incarceration.

More than half of all offences for which federally sentenced women are convicted are non-violent, property and drug offences. One reason why women account for 5% of admissions to federal penitentiaries is because they are far less likely than men to commit, or to be convicted of, serious crimes of violence which result in sentences in excess of two years.

Mandatory minimum sentences are often disproportionately harsh compared to the crimes committed by women; the context and systemic issues relevant to cases where women use lethal force are rarely fully explored at trial or at sentencing.

In 2001, 19.2% of the federally imprisoned women were serving life sentences for murder; 15 of these women were serving life sentences for first-degree murder and 53 for second-degree murder. Most women incarcerated for violent offences committed their crimes against a spouse or partner and often report having been physically or sexually abused by the person they assaulted.

72% of provincially sentenced women, 82% of all women and 90% of Aboriginal women serving federal prison sentences have histories of physical and/or sexual abuse.

The Cross Gender Monitoring Report (2000) on Canadian women’s prisons found that male staff members would often fail to announce their presence on the unit, have periodically seen the women naked, and the women also reported incidences where sexual comments and/or advancements were made; women in prison reported to CAEFS and the Canadian Human Rights Commission that this situation is growing worse.

43% of federally sentenced women have substance abuse or addiction concerns. 69% have indicated that drug and/or alcohol played a major role in their criminalization.

Only 1-2% of federally sentenced women are returned to prison as the result of the commission of new crimes. The overwhelming majority represent women who have their parole revoked as a result of administrative breaches of conditions of their community release. The recidivism rate of women released from the Okimaw Ohci Healing Lodge is even lower.

Due to the lack of services and halfway houses for women in general, women often serve longer periods of their sentence in prison than do men.

As the Auditor General, the Public Accounts Committee and the Canadian Human Rights Commission found in 2003, despite their low risk to re-offend and their high likelihood of not recidivating, there are too few resources to assist women in successfully integrating into the community after prison

Fewer resources for research and program development for incarcerated women result in inadequate and insufficient programs that address the realities faced by women, particularly poor, racialized women. Fewer than 2% of academic work and prison-related articles address issues pertaining to women prisoners and most neglect the issue of gender altogether.

It is sexist, racist and generally discriminatory and unethical to use therapeutic programs, psychological assessments and classification assessment tools and procedures developed for incarcerated men, on incarcerated women, and especially Aboriginal women prisoners.

The high rates of mental health issues, incidents of self-injury, depression and suicide in the population of imprisoned women, ethically and legally warrants sufficient and proper assessment of their treatment needs in a manner that does not result in high classification ratings for those with the greatest needs.

Our laws and policies are increasingly in conflict with the lived experiences of those most marginalized in our society, especially when they are women and girls. Social, racial, economic and gendered marginalization are the greatest predictors of who may be criminalized. The development of well-resourced education, health and social services are the most effective means of reducing the current trend of increased criminalization of women and girls.

Aboriginal Women

Context

In 2003, Aboriginal women made up 3% of the population of women in Canada, and yet represented 29% of all federally sentenced women. From 1997 to 2002, Aboriginal women in federal prisons increased by 36.7%.

45% of Aboriginal women make up the overall prison population, and are estimated to represent 90-99% of the population in some provincial jails.

Aboriginal women make up more than 50% of those women who are classified as maximum security, are sentenced to prison more often, and receive harsher sentences than non-Aboriginal women.

44% of Aboriginal women who are not living on a reserve, and 47% of Aboriginal women living on a reserve, have an income of less than $10,000.

Aboriginal peoples are 9 times more likely to go to prison than the majority of the non-Aboriginal population in Canada.

Aboriginal women and girls are vastly over represented in state institutions and continue to suffer the shameful and devastating impact of colonialism; from the Indian Act, to land thefts, to residential school, to child welfare seizure, to evisceration of health and educational services, to juvenile and adult detention and current trends now indicate that “treatment” will be the next colonial control of choice.

The over representation of Aboriginal people within the Canadian criminal justice system is euro-centric and indisputably the most egregious example of the racist legacy of colonialism.
Youth

It is estimated that 87% of Aboriginal women will experience physical violence and 57% will experience sexual abuse at some time in their lives.

Many Aboriginal children grow up institutionalized and racialized as a result of continued state control and social, economic and political oppression.

Aboriginal youth are disproportionately jailed in youth centers and transferred to adult jails and Manitoba transfers young people into the adult system at the highest rate of all the provinces and territories in Canada.

Aboriginal youth are criminalized and jailed at earlier ages and for longer periods of time than non-Aboriginal young people. Aboriginal youth also experience a lack of access to legal counsel and availability of community based resources and services.

Over half of the youth in state custody are Aboriginal children. The court’s determination of the “best interest of the child” interferes with the cultural interests of Aboriginal youth.
Women

The increased trend of criminalization demonstrates that poor, racialized women are forced to survive on the margins of society, which can lead to prostitution, drug addiction, homelessness, criminalization, and other forms of oppression.

Aboriginal women experience the justice system as a foreign, discriminatory, oppressive system, unrepresentative of their needs. It is a dehumanizing process, based on punishment and blame that strips Aboriginal women of their cultural identity and status.

Section 125(3) of the Correction and Conditional Release Act requires the National Parole Board to base its decision to grant parole to a prisoner based on a number of social factors. Poverty, educational level, work record, cultural background and race, feed discriminatory stereotypes and assumptions about the propensities of marginalized and racialized persons to commit “criminal” acts.

60.4% of Aboriginal prisoners admitted drug abuse in their childhood; 57.9% admitted to early alcohol abuse in their childhood; 35.3% suffered severe poverty as children; 41.1% suffered from childhood abuse and neglect.

94% of Aboriginal prisoners indicate that they have a problem with alcohol. Of these, 88% indicate that they need help to stop or control their drinking and 63% indicate that they need a form of support in order to stop using.

85% of criminalized Aboriginal women indicate that they used substances on the day of the offence for which they are now incarcerated. Women, who site drug abuse as self-medication, often discuss personal relationships as the cause of their pain. Abusive families and battering relationships are often strong themes in their lives.

90% of incarcerated Aboriginal women surveyed reported prior physical abuse, while 53% reported having been sexually abused.

In their 2003 special report, the Canadian Human Rights Commission reported that the Government of Canada has failed to develop a correctional strategy for Aboriginal women, despite having promised one ten years earlier.

Internationally and domestically, Canada is increasingly being censured for our continued mistreatment of our First Nations Aboriginal peoples. In 2003, the United Nations Committee examining Canada’s record on implementing the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women was especially critical of Canada’s failures to uphold domestic law and international agreements with respect to the treatment and equality of women in Canada, especially poor, disabled and racialized indigenous women.

Social Concerns

The criminalization of Aboriginal peoples is linked to the general inadequate socio-economic conditions which prevail in most Aboriginal communities; any solution to the former entails a solution to the latter.

In 1998, for people aged 15 and older, 21.1% of Aboriginal women and 26.5% of Aboriginal men were unemployed compared to non-Aboriginal rates of 9.7% for women and 9.9% for men. The average total income for Aboriginal people was $13,305 for women and $18,221 for men. For non-Aboriginal people it was $19,348 for women and $31,404 for men.

There are very few long-term and adequately paid employment opportunities in Aboriginal communities, particularly for Aboriginal women who have been denied any meaningful role in the social and economic development of their communities.

The cost associated with the economic marginalization of Aboriginal people was estimated at 7.5 billion dollars in 1996. 5.8 billion dollars of this money was estimated as the cost of lost production because Aboriginal people do not have the opportunity to participate fully in their potential economy. 1.7 billion dollars of this cost accounts for the few adequate social programs available to Aboriginal people.

Violence Against Women and Children

30% of children who experience abuse have physical, emotional and mental health issues. The effects can range from depression, to anxiety, to developmental delays. Abused children are also at a much greater risk of significant emotional problems and maladjustment, including aggression and violence.

From the age of 16, 51% of Canadian women report having experienced at least one incident of physical or sexual violence. Federally sentenced women also have high rates of childhood sexual abuse, commonly incestuous, violent, extended over a long period of time, and with multiple perpetrators. They also have high rates of re-victimization at the hands of violent men.

Violent men are three times more likely than non-violent men to have witnessed violence against their mothers in childhood. Women who were raised in similar circumstances are twice as likely to be victims of spousal violence.

• Data indicate that women were almost five times more likely to be killed by a spouse than by a stranger; 80% of spousal homicide victims are women.

Young women and children are highly vulnerable to sexual assault. In 1997, people under the age of 18 were 24% of the population but represented 60% of all sexual assault victims and 1/5 of physical assault victims.

Support and therapeutic services and programs commonly offered for women survivors of abuse tend to be system-based, as opposed to community-based and culturally appropriate.

Women who are prostituted are at a greater risk of physical and sexual assault, ongoing abuse and murder.

Violence is often used against young women as a form of policing by partners, fathers and brothers and young women are, among other things, denied access to money and forced to engage in sexual activity.

In 1994, 84% of sexual assault cases, 60% of physical abuse and 52% of neglect were against girls. 22% of the assaults occurred at the hands of family members, 78% of the perpetrators were male and weapons were used in 28% of the cases of sexual assault.

54% of girls under the age of 16 have experienced some form of unwanted sexual attention; 24% have experienced rape or coercive sex and 17% have experienced incest.

Incidences of child sexual abuse for girls under 8 years old in some Aboriginal communities are as high as 75% to 80%.

53% of women who are disabled from birth have been raped, abused, or assaulted.

Many Aboriginal girls were who were adopted or placed in non-Aboriginal foster homes experienced intense racism from an early age.

The mortality rate for prostituted girls and women is 40 times the national average. 38% of 13 year-old girls and 48% of 15 year old girls believe they are overweight.

Magazines, television, music and self-help columns show young women that it is important to be attractive to their partners. Young women have expressed an understanding that if their appearance becomes less than perfect, it is understood that their boyfriends will leave them.

Family relations that embrace traditional family and gender belief systems can, and do, operate to place girls on trajectories of low income because they often emphasize the importance of marriage and family at the expense of economic self-sufficiency.

The suicide rate for adolescent Aboriginal girls is 8 times the national average for non-Aboriginal adolescent girls.

Canada and the Youth Criminal Justice Act

Prior to the enactment of the Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA), Canada incarcerated youth at ten times the rate of some states in the United States and at 4 times the rate at which Canada jails adults; since the YCJA was enacted April 1, 2003, the rate at which youth are imprisoned in Canada has dropped in every province 30-50%.

For 8 of the 9 most common offences, prior to the YCJA, youth served longer prison sentences than adults.

Although the overall number of charges laid against youth by police has increased, the absolute numbers for serious charges such as murder, arson, breaking and enter, fraud, robbery, major theft, and trafficking drugs have remained low or have decreased. Contrary to public perception of the juvenile justice system as lenient, with the new adult sentences under the YCJA, the punitiveness of youth dispositions for violent offences has increased.

The replacement of the Juvenile Delinquents Act with the Young Offenders Act had unexpected consequences. Old status offences were replaced by new 'status-like', ‘failure to comply’ offences. Over 1/4 of the charges heard in youth court against young women were under section 26: "failure to comply with a disposition". Research demonstrates that more Canadian youth were found guilty of these non-compliance offences and sentenced to custody than those found guilty of violent offences. Despite initial evidence to the contrary, CAEFS remains concerned that inadequate social, economic, educational and health services could thwart the initial successes of the YCJA.

Between 1992 and 1997, there was a slight decrease in the number of young women charged by police, yet young women received more serious dispositions. There was an increase in the use of probation, open custody and secure custody, while the relative use of fines, community service orders and absolute discharges decreased.

The new YCJA has the potential to significantly limit the numbers of youth who are criminalized. If it is not fully implemented, however, it could also further widen the already wide and sticky net of social control and result in more youth receiving custody dispositions and serving their sentences in adult prisons. As it is now, The YCJA extends the group of youth who can receive an adult sentence to include 14 and 15 year olds.

In 1999-2000, the greatest number of charges laid against young people was for property theft; 2/3 of these charges resulted in convictions, with many youth entering guilty pleas.

Violent crime rates for young girls receive significant media play and attention. Their actions are seen as deviations from the gendered norms of society. Girls are more likely to be sent to prison for minor offences, due to economic vulnerability and inequality.

The increased crime rate for young women is mainly due to the fact that there are more young women in the Canadian population.

Discrimination in the sentencing of young women is very common. They are more likely to be detained for ‘their own protection’ on the basis of non-criminal, administrative offences, such as breach of bail, probation conditions and failure to appear in court.

Young women represent a greater proportion of youths sentenced to custodial care than do young men. Young women are often jailed in youth centres with young men and many incidents of sexual harassment and assault go unreported, since the reporting of such instances results in young women being held in even more isolated conditions with more limited access to institutional services, let alone community resources.

Research conducted in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada has consistently concluded that early contact with the juvenile or criminal justice system significantly increases the likelihood of subsequent re-involvement in the system; the UK has recently announced plans to curb and possibly eliminate the use of imprisonment for young people.

Canadians prefer that more money be invested in support services for youth and that the public attitude surveys persistently reveal that sentences in the community, as opposed to jail should be the norm.

Justice and the Poor

Single parent mothers, children, Aboriginal peoples, people with disabilities, and visible minorities are vulnerable to deep persistent poverty. People living on social assistance can be further impoverished by such a complex web of rules, regulations, and demeaning treatment that their own needs and abilities are undermined, leading to depression and feelings of hopelessness.

Issues, such as jailing for the non-payment of fines, disproportionately impacts poor mothers, whose primary offences are most often fraud, theft or prostitution in order to provide for their families.

Due to economic cutbacks and disqualifications from welfare, women are increasingly criminalized or are forced to return to abusive relationships, the streets and/or to place their children in state custody that victimizes them.

One of every five children lives in poverty (1.5 million); compared to other developed industrialized countries, Canada has the second highest rate of child poverty.

In a study conducted in Montreal, research indicated that the mortality rate for young women living on the street was 31 times greater than that of girls not living on the street.

43% of Aboriginal women, 37% of visible minority, and 48% of immigrant women live in poverty.

In Canada, 1999, 50% of wealthy families controlled 94.4% of the wealth, leaving only 5.6% of the wealth for the poorest 50% of the population.

For the same behaviour, the poor are more likely to be arrested. If arrested, more likely to be charged; if charged, more likely to be convicted; if convicted, more likely to be sentenced to prison; if imprisoned, more likely to be given a longer term than those of the middle or upper classes, and convictions are rarely taken to appeal courts.

Incarceration often results in loss of employment, housing, support from family and friends, as well as the loss of children to the state.

It is well established that personal health is better for those living in higher socio-economic environments. Human costs of poverty include low birth-weight, increased illness, lower labour force participation, family disintegration, homicide and/or suicide.

Due to low paying wages, single mothers are often forced out of employment in order to raise their children. For example, in Vancouver, a single parent would have to work 58 hours a week at minimum wage just to reach the poverty line.

The long-term human and fiscal costs associated with addressing homelessness, increased use of prisons, violence, using foster care and other child protection services are many times higher than the cost of adequate social assistance funds.

Welfare incomes in all provinces are grossly inadequate and have been described as “criminally low”, yet federal and provincial governments are not held accountable to the consequent risks posed to the public safety or well-being. Instead of improving the living standards of people on welfare, the provinces have imposed freezes, cuts and bans to welfare. The poorest of the poor are falling farther behind and the gap between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’ widens in a country often regarded as the best place to live in the world.

At no point between 1986 and 2001 did any province or territory provide welfare benefits that allowed welfare recipients to reach the poverty line.

Source: Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies (CAEFS)

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