Sections 79, 81 and 84 of the CCRA provide a progressive approach to the provision of correctional services for Aboriginal prisoners. They authorize CSC to transfer the care and custody of Aboriginal prisoners to Aboriginal communities, which are broadly defined as a "first nation, tribal council, band, community, agency or other group with a predominately aboriginal leadership." In addition, the CCRA ensures that Aboriginal communities are given the opportunity to propose parole plans for prisoners who wish to integrate into those communities upon their release. CAEFS believes that similar entitlements should be enacted to provide the opportunity for federally sentenced women to serve their sentences in a facility or with such organizations as drug treatment facilities or transition houses, which provide services to women. Release on day parole to an organization in the community is especially important for federally sentenced women because there are only five women-only halfway houses in Canada. In the regions that do not have women's halfway houses, such as the Prairie and Atlantic regions, women generally end up having to be released to halfway house or Community Correctional Centres for men. This option is not appropriate for the many federally sentenced women who have experienced physical and/or sexual abuse by men, and who cannot feel safe in such residential situations. Because of the lack of available space in halfway houses, many women who are eligible for day parole are being released to men's resources or choose to stay in prison. The opportunity to be released on day parole to a facility or organization which provides services to women would have the added benefit of putting women in touch with other services in the community they may require to successfully integrate into the community.
Section 87 of the CCRA provides that a prisoner's state of health and health care needs, which includes mental health care pursuant to s. 85, must be taken into consideration in all decisions which affect her/him. This includes decisions regarding prisoner transfers, placements in administrative segregation, as well as the delivery of programs and release-preparation. Unfortunately, s. 87 has been applied to federally sentenced women who are identified as having mental health needs in a manner which further disadvantages them. Approximately half of the group of women who were slated for transfer to Kingston Penitentiary before that decision was reversed by CSC in December 1997 were women with mental health needs. These women are now effectively kept in administrative segregation at the Prison for Women. In addition, women who are identified as having mental health and capacity needs are also currently incarcerated at Springhill Institution, a penitentiary for men in the Atlantic Region, and at the Regional Psychiatric Centre in Saskatoon, a high security prison and psychiatric hospital for men in the Prairie Region. CSC's approach to those women it has identified as having mental health needs has been to isolate them from the general population of women prisoners and confine them in oppressive and dehumanizing conditions in men's prisons. Their freedom within those institutions is severely restricted and few programs, if any, are available to them. CAEFS believes that the proper institutional response for these women is to permit them to serve their sentences in the regional prisons for women, while providing them with the extra institutional and community-based therapeutic support they require. In a 1996 study prepared for CSC, Dr. Margo Rivera assessed the women identified by CSC as having the greatest mental health care needs. She concluded that of the entire population of federally sentenced women, only eight required extra supervision, support and treatment in order to be integrated into the general population of the regional prisons. A living unit in the regional prisons could be set aside, with more structured supervision and counsellors qualified to deliver therapeutic programs. Such an approach, which could address mental health care needs, while at the same time maximizing women's access to the same entitlements afforded the rest of the prison population, is the kind of response CAEFS believes is mandated by s. 87. Section 87 should be interpreted as a remedial section rather than a justification to subject the most vulnerable of federally sentenced women to the harshest treatment. The isolation of women with mental health needs in segregated conditions in men's prisons or in the Prison for Women in Kingston is contrary to the objectives of the CCRA to promote rehabilitation and reintegration into the community, not to mention the expectation that correctional policies and programs will demonstrate sensitivity to special needs (per ss. 3, 4(h), and 86). Current corrections approaches also infringe the equality provisions of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which prohibits the imposition of additional burdens on members of disadvantaged groups. Mental disability is enumerated as a prohibited ground of discrimination in s. 15 of the Charter.
|