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Ontario , The Ontario government has launched a sweeping review of its policies on the use of segregation in provincial jails, a move that comes amid a growing national debate about solitary confinement and its impact on prisoners with mental illness.
“We are taking a hard look at our segregation policy to ensure that it is helping those inmates, and aligns with our stated goals of rehabilitation, reintegration, increased mental health supports, and improved staff and inmate safety,” Correctional Services Minister Yasir Naqvi told the Star in a statement.
The ministry plans to announce the review on its website Thursday, timing it to the public release of a March 24 report that recommends a massive overhaul of services for female inmates with major mental illness — including the creation of a facility for high-needs female prisoners.
The Star has obtained a copy of the report, which the province commissioned as a result of a human rights settlement in 2013 with Christina Jahn, a Smiths Falls woman who spent seven months in solitary confinement at the Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre.
Ontario operates a psychiatric treatment unit for male prisoners in Brockville, but the same service does not exist for women. Lawyers representing Jahn argued the lack of a comparable treatment option is discriminatory.
The ministry has come under increased pressure to answer questions about its segregation policies as Star reports over the past several months have documented concerns about corrections policies, including the housing of sick inmates in solitary at the province’s new superjail, delays in responding to requirements of the Jahn settlement and the case of an inmate who alleged he was held in segregation for 90 days after other prisoners complained about his HIV status.
The ministry is reviewing the report on services for female inmates and could not comment on whether the province will adopt the changes meant to better serve female inmates.
Among the report’s recommendations: mental health screening for all female inmates upon admission, regular reassessment of care and treatment, female-focused mental health training for staff, and a move to “reframe, repurpose, and rename segregation as a temporary part of a continuum of care.”
Human rights groups, mental health professionals and politicians have been pushing for a psychiatric facility for female inmates in the decade since the province created 100 forensic beds for male prisoners at the St. Lawrence Valley Correctional and Treatment Centre in Brockville.
That treatment centre, a designated psychiatric facility under the Mental Health Act, is staffed by psychiatric nurses and clinicians. The new report recommends creating a similar treatment centre for women.
“It is recognized that this will require significant change to policies and procedures … and as such is suggested as a longer-term consideration,” the report says.
“There is huge potential for change here,” said lawyer Christine Johnson, who represented Jahn with co-counsel Paul Champ. “The ball’s in Ontario’s court. They have an opportunity to really make a change to the culture of corrections.”
Jahn’s 2012 human rights complaint against the correctional services ministry alleged she was placed in solitary confinement instead of receiving treatment for her mental illness, which included a bipolar disorder diagnosis. She spent 210 days in segregation during two separate periods of incarceration in 2011 and 2012, while serving sentences for charges including theft, assault, mischief, resisting arrest and causing a disturbance.
The complaint alleged she experienced “brutal and humiliating treatment,” was beaten, deprived of basic hygiene privileges and denied access to cancer medication under the presumption that it was too dangerous for staff to administer drugs to her, which led to an emergency mastectomy.
On the first day of the human rights tribunal hearing in September 2013, the two sides agreed to a settlement, which awarded Jahn an undisclosed sum of money and required the ministry to commit to 10 “public interest remedies” with varying deadlines.
The March 24 reportpartially fulfils the requirements of remedy No. 1. The ministry now has 18 months to implement the recommendations or provide a written rationale to the Ontario Human Rights Commission for not doing so.
The ministry says its segregation policy review will include consultations this summer with mental health experts, civil liberties groups, correctional staff, the office of Ombudsman André Marin and the Ontario Human Rights Commission.
