Dangerous Offender Designation Denounced

On June 29, 1999, the Alberta Court of Appeal released its decision to overturn the November 17, 1994 designation of Lisa Neve as a dangerous offender. Lisa was 21 years of age when she was labelled the most dangerous woman in Canada and sentenced to an indeterminate prison sentence. Previously, two other women have been labelled dangerous offenders. The first woman, Marlene Moore, killed herself in the Prison for Women. A third woman’s case was also overturned on appeal.

When Lisa was 12 years old, she was dragged into secure “treatment”, followed fairly quickly by secure custody. The system was not impressed by her assertive and confident manner. Unlike so many other young women her age, she was clearly a respected and undisputed leader. These qualities are not ones that are generally accepted, much less encouraged or nurtured, in our social control systems -- be they child welfare or criminal justice in orientation. They are seen as particularly unacceptable when embodied by a young woman. Sexism, racism, hetero sexism and class biases intersect to provide an incredibly discriminatory lens through which women like Lisa are viewed and judged.

As a result, it did not take long for the adults in authority to label Lisa as a “problem” in need of “correction”. Once the labels were applied, they not only stuck, but they also attracted other labels which built upon and expanded those prior. Consequently, Lisa started as “mischievous”, “a brat”, then she was called an instigator, negative, and eventually, aggressive, sociopathic and then a dangerous offender. Largely based upon accounts of her institutional behaviour in young offender centres, as well as her “unfeminine” renegade behaviour while working the street, Lisa was characterized as the most dangerous woman in Canada by Justice Murray in 1994 and then as a maximum security prisoner by the Correctional Service of Canada for more than four years.