K was initially charged with first degree murder. It is common that the police usually charge with the most serious offence supported by their version of the facts, those young people who they wish to see transferred up to the ordinary or adult court. Evidence that is presented at a transfer hearing is not subject to the same rigorous examination as when it is raised at trial. K was transferred up essentially on the basis of that charge. She was one of seven youth who were involved, and, ultimately, the only young woman charged. Two young men were also charged and the remaining four youth gave evidence against their “friends” in exchange for their freedom.

Once K was transferred to the adult court, the Crown Prosecutor immediately offered her a deal: a recommendation for 3-4 years in prison if she entered a guilty plea to a reduced charge of manslaughter. As is too often the case, although K’s lawyer felt that she had a chance of acquittal, she was not willing to risk going to trial on the first degree murder charge because of the potential that she might end up convicted and therefore subject to a mandatory minimum sentence of life in prison with no parole eligibility for 25 years.

K consequently pleaded guilty and was convicted of manslaughter. Although the Crown argued that K should be sentenced to 3-4 years in prison, the judge decided to give her a sentence of one year. When K realized that this would mean that she would have to return to the same prison in where she had spent the previous two years of remand, her lawyer was instructed to try to get her sent somewhere else. The result was a request for a prison sentence of two years so that she might be incarcerated in the new regional women’s prison in Edmonton or the Okimaw Ohci Healing Lodge for Aboriginal women prisoners.

Unfortunately, the Correctional Service of Canada classified K as a maximum security prisoner and shipped her off to the segregated maximum security unit in the Saskatchewan Penitentiary. I met K there, just after she had tried , for the second time, to kill herself. She was 18 years old. She was later transferred to the Regional Psychiatric Centre. CSC staff also recommended that she be detained in prison until the expiration of her warrant of committal thereto.