d) Remedying the Increased Criminalization of Women

Finally, as CAEFS has articulated in many other venue and fora, the current focus on criminalizing and jailing an increasing numbers of women will have a significant impact on the current prison population, as well as on future groups of women imprisoned in the regional prisons. Most obviously, if there are greater numbers of women in prison, we are likely to see increased issues pertaining to overcrowding, such as increased self-injurious behaviour, followed by increased assaultive behaviour amongst the women and between the women, followed by potentially assaultive behaviour between women prisoners and staff. In addition, more women will undoubtedly result in fewer programs and decreased availability of many programs and services to all women prisoners.

Prisons should not continue to be the accepted fallback response to the evisceration of social and health services. They cannot be seen as an adequate substitute for inadequate social assistance, housing or community-based mental health resources. We believe this speaks directly to the need for clear and concerted decarceration strategies, as well as the need for newly developed and redeveloped linkages between provincial, territorial and federal social service, education, health and other support services.

Accordingly, CAEFS encourages the CHRC to recommend that the federal government exercise its spending power in accordance with Canadian human rights and Charter protections by introducing national standards regarding the provision of social programs, as well as health and educational services. The continued off-loading of responsibility for the marginalized, without the requisite resources to address the growing needs, will only result in increased reliance on our criminal justice system.

CAEFS further encourages the Commission to urge the federal government and particularly the Correctional Service of Canada to develop a risk assessment model that recognizes the increasing risk that legislation, policies and practices pose to the ability of women to successfully live in their communities. Such a model would necessarily focus upon the provision of requisite resources in accordance with the constellation of needs identified by and for women prisoners, such that the risk posed to her successful integration into the community may be effectively eliminated.

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