Consequently, one of the most egregious examples of the discriminatory treatment of women is that there is only one minimum security prison for women in Canada, with a capacity to house only 13 women. This prison, the Isabel McNeill House in Kingston, is slated for closure in the near future. There are some houses that are designated as minimum security placements within the regional prisons. The beds designated as minimum security within the regional prisons are virtually indistinguishable from the medium security beds however.

In the regional prisons, aside from the new super-maximum security units, there is virtually no difference in the conditions of confinement for women within the prisons based on their security classification as minimum or medium security prisoners. The regional prisons have replicated and exacerbated one of the worst features of the discriminatory treatment that was central to the treatment of women imprisoned in the Prison for Women in Kingston. In practice, all women in the general population are subject to a higher level of security than that which even the CSC acknowledges they require.

c) Segregated Maximum Security Units for Women

Soon after the first regional prison, Edmonton Institution for Women, was opened, CSC decided that maximum security women would not be housed at the regional prisons. This decision is now said to have resulted from a number of incidents at the prison, but the decision was taken after a media-inspired tempest occurred following the flight of three women form the prison. All three were Aboriginal. All three were classified as maximum security prisoners. All three left through an open door while staff watched them leave. The local police who were summoned by the CSC staff captured all three within 10 blocks of the prison.

The “escape” resulted in an immediate decision to temporarily move all of the women out of the regional prisons and into segregated maximum security units in men’s prisons. This plan was implemented in 1996 and was due to last for 18-24 months, just long enough for the regional prisons for women to be re-fortified with security fences, cameras, et cetera. Although one of the units in the men’s prisons has now been closed, and we are repeatedly assured by CSC that two of the remaining three will close “soon”, both remain open and full to date.

In addition to being refortified in 1996-1997, ostensibly so that the maximum security women could be returned to the prisons, their return has been further delayed by the decision of the CSC to further fortify their prisons for women. Accordingly, they are in the process of opening new segregated maximum security units for women in each of the women’s prisons. The rationale for this is rooted in the discriminatory assessment, classification and treatment of federally sentenced women, especially Aboriginal women prisoners and those with mental and/or cognitive disabilities.

Submission of the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies (CAEFS) to the Canadian Human Rights Commission for the Special Report on the Discrimination on the Basis of Sex, Race and Disability Faced by Federally Sentenced Women