The news is full of stories these days about human rights violations by Canadian authorities: the apparent Canadian complicity in the detention, deportation and torture of Maher Arar and others since 9/11; deadly police mistreatment of Aboriginal people in Saskatoon; the terrorization and deaths of young people in state care, like David Meffe.

For me, these abuses provide a stark reminder of why the Elizabeth Fry Societies three years ago asked the Canadian Human Rights Committee to conduct a comprehensive review of human rights violations experienced by women prisoners in Canada.

As a student, when I volunteered to visit and tutor prisoners and psychiatric patients, I had no idea how many days and nights I would spend in the next two decades kneeling in front of metal doors, or peering through meal slots trying to assist prisoners. Some of them were shackled, others slashing their bodies or smashing their heads against the wall.

Nor could I have imagined the utter disdain with which others, be they correctional authorities, members of Parliament or academics might regard calls for the law to be upheld in the treatment of prisoners.

The January 2004 report of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, like the 1996 recommendations of Madam Justice Louise Arbour's Commission of Inquiry, recognized the systemic violation of human rights in Canada's prisons for women. "A prison sentence deprives a [prisoner] of her or his right to liberty, but it should not deprive [her] of other rights," the commission report stated. Its 19 recommendations called for a virtual re-build of the system. Significantly, the commission called for an independent monitoring mechanism to ensure that change happens.

Prisoners across the country are now relying on Prime Minister Paul Martin's repeated promise to eradicate the democratic deficit and his commitment in the Speech from the Throne to address social issues while upholding "the rule of law, liberty, democracy, equality of opportunity, and fairness", while protecting all Canadians "from tyranny and oppression".

They are also banking on Public Safety Minister Anne McLellan's commitment to uphold the rule of law.

It is no accident that around the world, women are the fastest growing prison population. There is clear evidence that increase in the number of women in prison is linked to the evisceration of health, education and social services. We also know that the cycle intensifies in times of economic downturn.

Jails are our most comprehensive homelessness initiative.

In Canada, 30% of the women serving two years or more in prison are Aboriginal. In fact, Aboriginal women account for the overwhelming majority of women prisoners in some regions of the country despite making up less than 2% of the Canadian population.

The Human Rights Commission's report called for a virtual rebuild of the prison system, along with an independent monitoring mechanism.

In effect, Aboriginal women continue to suffer the shameful and devastating impact of colonization. The Canadian Human Rights Commission has demanded that correctional assessment and classification schemes currently used for women be scrapped because of the inherent race, gender and disability biases. The Commission also called for the immediate development of more appropriate community supports and resources for Aboriginal women.

We also know that increased numbers of young women with mental and cognitive disabilities - women who used to fill psychiatric and mental health facilities - are now increasingly being criminalized. The progressive trends of the past to de-institutionalize those with cognitive and mental disabilities have been subverted by resource depletion in social and health services throughout Canada.

The result is that more and more people are literally being dumped into the streets. On the street, their attempts to survive, to self-medicate and to cope, combine with the behaviour that evolves from being disenfranchised to lead to increased criminalization and imprisonment.

Once in prison, although they primarily pose a risk to themselves, these women have many needs. And as a result, they are considered difficult to manage and are too often classified as maximum security prisoners.

So in addition to serving most of their sentence in the segregated maximum-security units, two of which are in men's prisons, these women are also most likely to be placed in segregation.

When correctional institutions reflexively adapt for women prisoners the techniques it uses with men, that only serves to exacerbate the trend to increasingly criminalize women with mental and cognitive disabilities.

Ironically, the fact that such services are developing in prisons at a time when they are increasingly non-existent in the community actually increases the likelihood that sick women will receive federal sentences, because of the presumption that this is the only way they'll be able to get access to desperately-needed care.

The Canadian Human Rights Commission recognized that we must resist and reject the continued trend to jail women because of what they "need," only to release them to the street with little more than psycho-social, cognitive skills or drug abstinence programming. Imagine for a moment how different life would be if we chose to focus our energies on sharing resources, authority and power, and condemned the abuse of power and force by police and prison personnel and the neglect of institutionalized persons. What would the system look like if we prosecuted and sentenced people for lying while running for office, wrongful use of access to government power and public resources? It is no accident who is criminalized.

The human and financial costs are too great to continue on this track. We must not continue to abandon the most vulnerable and marginalized in society to our most expensive and least effective system. Instead, we must demand that public money be re-invested in rebuilding our social, health and education services to correct the current human and democratic deficit.

Kim Pate is Executive Director of the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies. A teacher and lawyer by training, she has worked with vulnerable, criminalized and imprisoned youth, men and women for more than twenty years.

source: StraightGoods

Additional Resources from the DAWN archives ...

Women in Prison

 

CAEFS Fact Sheets
National Elizabeth Fry Week - May 3 - 9 2004

Human and Fiscal Costs of Prison
Women and Self-Harm
Importance of Community Options
Women in Prison
Aboriginal Women
Violence Against Women and Children
Canada and the Youth Criminal Justice Act
Justice and the Poor

CAEFS' Election Questions - Canadian Assocation of Elizabeth Fry Societies (CAEFS)

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Page last updated September 14, 2004