It is very difficult to talk or write about our work without alternately feeling extreme despair or outrage. Indeed, I find that much of my work and actions are driven by emotions that vacillate between the two. Part of the difficulty in addressing the issues that are increasingly arising for women prisoners in Canada and internationally, is the reality that things are supposed to have improved significantly since the bleak days of only one federal prison for women in Canada.

It is now almost twelve years since Creating Choices (Report of the Task Force on Federally Sentenced Women) was accepted by the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC), just over six years since the first of the new women's prisons opened and Madam Justice Arbour issued her scathing indictment of the manner in which the CSC manages corrections in general, but the imprisonment of women in particular. On July 6th, 2000, we finally celebrated the closure of the Prison for Women, ending its 66 year history of confining women and girls.

For federally sentenced women, CAEFS, and many others, it was a significantly muted celebration in light of the fact that the Prison for Women in Kingston was replaced by ten other prison units for women in federal penitentiaries; eleven, if you count the provincial prison for women in British Columbia, the Burnaby Correctional Centre for Women. Four of these penitentiaries for federally sentenced women are segregated maximum security units in men's prisons. It is no wonder that women prisoners frequently ask; "Whatever happened to creating choices?"

Following more than a decade of enlightened reform initiatives, including the human rights complaint of the Justice for Women, the Daubney Committee report of the Standing Committee on Justice and Solicitor General, entitled, Taking Responsibility in the report known as Creating Choices, that the Task Force on Federally Sentenced Women issued a ground breaking series of recommendations. There had long been calls for reform to the manner in which women prisoners were dealt with in Canada, however, the realities of the criminal justice system are that it is a slow lumbering giant that takes many, many, big and intensive shoves in order to shift itself.

The Task Force was one little shove that was aided by a tremendous push occasioned by the deaths of seven women at the Prison for Women in Kingston during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Six of those women were Aboriginal women. There is no doubt in the minds of many of us, that it was the blood of these women that caused the Correctional Service of Canada to make a special push to ensure that the Task Force on Federally Sentenced Women issued recommendations that were followed by the Corrections Service of Canada.