Beyond the obvious restrictions on your rights and liberties that prison necessarily imposes, there are ways your rights and/or liberties can be further restricted. This section outlines some of those, and begins to suggest what you can do to protect yourself and your peers.
What is segregation?
If you are segregated, it is readily obvious. You are separated from the general prison population and put in a segregation cell. However, segregation is actually a status and not merely a place. The Corrections and Conditional Release Act characterizes segregation as any regime that is more restrictive than that of the general population.128 Freedom inside the prison is more restricted than for most other prisoners -you do not have access to the rest of the prison, programs, yard, gym, etc.
Because women classified as maximum security prisoners are generally housed in a separate wing of the women’s or men’s penitentiaries, they experience many of the same conditions that a prisoner locked in segregation encounters. For this reason, it is currently being argued that the procedures and rights outlined below apply just as much to women classified as maximum security prisoners than those in “seg.” In fact, CAEFS (Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies) and others consider all of the women in such units to be in a segregated form of prison.
Return to note 128. Corrections and Conditional Release Act, S.C. 1992, c.20, s. 31 [CCRA].