…excessively delayed, overly defensive and absent any commitment to
specific timely action… The observations and recommendations detailed
in last year’s Report have in large part been ignored.26
In particular, the Correctional Investigator, observed that six years after the
Arbour Inquiry:
women continue to be housed in maximum security units within male
penitentiaries; the organizational and program changes related to the appointment of
a Deputy Commissioner for Women’s Corrections to support the
“separate stream” for Women’s Corrections have not been
implemented; and there has been no “final response plan” issued by Correctional
Services on Justice Arbour’s Report.27
As many authors have identified, CSC’s poor track record is felt most profoundly
by Aboriginal women28:
Imprisoned [Aboriginal] women are triply disadvantaged: they suffer pains
of incarceration common to all prisoners; in addition, they experience both
the pains Native prisoners feel as a result of their cultural dislocation and
those which women prisoners experience as a result of being incarcerated
far from home and family.29
CSC’s continued failure to address the long-standing issues, concerns, and
recommendations consistently raised in reports that span several decades,
violates the rights of FSW as enshrined in both domestic and international human rights instruments, and is a breach of CSC’s fiduciary duty to FSW. In spite of
the fact that the Correctional Investigator continues to reiterate the same
concerns raised by Justice Arbour and others, CSC has repeatedly failed to
adequately address these concerns:
26. |
Id. at 6. |
27. |
Id.
at 10. |
28. |
See,
for example, K. Hannah-Moffat, Punishment in Disguise: Penal
Governance, Federal Imprisonment of Women in Canada. (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 2001); Monture- Angus, i note 6,
Arbour, supra note 7; Canada, Report of the Task Force
on Federally Sentenced Women, Creating Choices (1990),
www.csc-scc.gc.ca; S. B.
Morin, Whatever Happened to the Promises of Creating Choices:
Federally Sentenced Maximum Security Women (Ottawa: Correctional
Services of Canada, 1999); Manitoba, Public Inquiry into the Administration
of Justice and Aboriginal Peoples, Report of the Aboriginal
Justice Inquiry of Manitoba: The Justice System and Aboriginal
Peoples, vol. 1 (Winnipeg: Queens Printer, 1991) Associate
Chief Justice A.C. Hamilton and Associate Chief Judge C.M. Sinclair,
Commissioners. |
29. |
Canada, House of Commons, Standing Committee on Justice and Solicitor General (David
Daubney, Chair) Taking Responsibility (Report on Its Review of Sentencing, Conditional Release
and Related Aspects of Corrections), (Ottawa: Queen’s Printer, 1988) at 237. |
|