The practice of transferring women with mental health disabilities to maximum security units in men’s prisons has been severely criticized as discriminatory by many. Notably, the Correctional Investigator has stated that:

The placement of maximum security women and women with serious mental health problems in male penitentiaries is inappropriate. In indicated last year that such placement was discriminatory and that regardless of the accommodations made, it was, in fact, a form of segregation. These women are not only removed from association with the general population of the institution they are housed in; they are as well, segregated from the broader general population of female offenders housed at the women’s regional facilities. This segregation based on security classification and mental health status places these women, in terms of their conditions of confinement, at a considerable disadvantage to that of male offenders.

1999-2000 Annual Report of the Correctional Investigator, pp. 28-29.

I. Remedial Action Required

In light of the foregoing, and in conjunction with the submissions of Professor Patricia Monture-Angus, as well as those of other equality-seeking groups, CAEFS is seeking a number of specific recommendations from the Canadian Human Rights Commission to remedy the human rights violations evidenced by the detailed documentation of the discrimination faced by federally sentenced women in Canada.

1. Implementation of the Recommendations of the Arbour Commission

It should by now be beyond question that there have been repeated calls for correctional accountability. These calls for accountability were reinforced, but not commenced, by Madam Justice Louise Arbour in her 1996 report. Indeed, the office of the Correctional Investigator, the Task Force on Federally Sentenced Women and many previous reports and Commissions of Inquiry, not to mention the investigation conducted by the Correctional Service of Canada itself, have called for increased accountability within corrections and between the Correctional Service of Canada and other external bodies, including the office of the Minister responsible for Correctional Services, the Solicitor General of Canada, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights and cabinet and Parliament itself.

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