Q & A: HOW ARE WOMEN WITH DISABILITIES DISCRIMINATED AGAINST?
Historically, women have been over-represented in psychiatric facilities and under-represented in the prison system. However, with the closure of psychiatric institutions and increasingly overtaxed and under-resourced community based services, Canada is now witnessing a marked increase in the number of women with cognitive and mental disabilities who are being criminalized.
CSC research about women in prison indicates that, according to their research, women prisoners have a significantly higher incidence than the general population of mental disability including schizophrenia, major depression, substance use disorders, psychosexual dysfunction, and antisocial personality disorder. In addition, imprisoned women have a much higher incidence of a history of childhood sexual abuse and severe physical abuse than women in the general population. Among Aboriginal women, who are disproportionately represented in the federal prison system, 90% reported physical abuse and 61% reported sexual abuse.
Women are often coerced into "treatment" and may also be involuntarily transferred to segregated maximum security units in men's prisons, and occasionally to psychiatric facilities in a manner which clearly interferes with their human rights and Charter protected rights at all levels, including those that are part of international human rights obligations and commitments.
Women with mental health problems are over-classified as maximum security prisoners and are frequently subjected to time in the segregation units. In spite of clear recommendations by Madam Justice Louise Arbour on the need for much more restricted use of administrative segregation, the Correctional Service of Canada has not accepted or implemented these recommendations.
CSC employs therapeutic models which CAEFS, along with mental health specialists, believe are inappropriate in a prison setting. The ability to make informed choices and freely consent to medical and/or therapeutic interventions is hampered by the prison environment. So much so, that some doctors refuse to work within prisons as they do not believe prisoners are provided with sufficient autonomy to make informed decisions about their medical and/or therapeutic treatment. Medical confidentiality is not ensured and women routinely stress the fact that correctional staff often refuse to allow them to consult in confidence with physicians and specialists when they do exit the prison for special medical treatments.