Most of the women (and men) end up serving longer sentences and too often end up released on their statutory release dates or detained until the expiration of their sentences. Anyone sentenced to life in prison may never be well enough to jump through the behavioural hoops required for them to achieve conditional release and so may spend many more years than their sentencing judge intended in prison. One example of this has now been chronicled in a documentary movie entitled, Sentenced to Life. The real issues are that the lack of mental health and community supports in the community are resulting in more people in prison for longer periods of time as a result of a failure to accommodate their mental and/or cognitive disabilities in the community. This year, we have started to see more long-term supervision orders (LTOs) being given to those with disabilities, in conjunction with federal and provincial prison sentences. The federal Correctional Service of Canada has the responsibility to supervise those with the long-term offender (LTO) designation. As such, provincial correctional authorities can further off load resourcing responsibilities to the federal government.

Some judges have refused to participate in such facades however. In addition, at least one judge that we know of, after recognizing that prisoners, especially those with mental health and cognitive disabilities, are too often subjected to double punishment by correctional authorities, has routinely refused to proceed with charges in provincial court in circumstances where the prisoners have also been subjected to significant administrative penalties of extended periods in segregation. As the Supreme Court of Canada has recognized, segregated conditions are not the conditions of confinement contemplated by the courts when they sentence individuals, especially those with mental disabilities, to terms of imprisonment. Other judges have sentenced prisoners who insist on pleading guilty to “offences” with which they are charged in prison to minimal and/or concurrent terms of imprisonment, in attempts to send clear messages to correctional authorities.

We are also seeing the increased feminization and criminalization of poverty. Welfare fraud is one example of how poor women are increasingly likely to be criminalized. Their attempts to survive poverty too often results in charges ranging from fraud (including welfare fraud), soliciting, pimping, living off the avails, or, as in the Hamilton and Brown cases, importing and trafficking. Increasingly we are seeing these as means utilized by people, especially women, to make the rent and/or feed their children/families. It used to be that we might see women resorting to such means to address extraordinary expenses such as birthdays Christmas and/or other holidays, camp, et cetera. Now, it is increasingly the manner in which basic living costs are being covered.