Finally, in determining if and when the dangerous offender provisions should apply, the Court of Appeal determined that, “the question is whether, relatively speaking compared to all other offenders in Canada - male and female, young and old, advantaged and disadvantaged - Neve falls into that small group of offenders clustered at or near the extreme end of offenders in this country.” They also found that Lisa Neve did not fit into that group at all.

Within two days, Lisa went from facing the rest of her life in prison to being released from prison. Uncharacteric of most young Aboriginal people adopted out to white families at birth, Lisa’s adoptive family remains extremely supportive and Lisa is working hard to overcome the impact of her imprisonment and plans for the future. The biggest danger for Lisa remains, however, the reaction of others to her infamous dangerous offender label.

As you do here in Australia, we have many other tragic examples of the targeting and isolation of Aboriginal women, who once criminalized, live in virtual isolation in segregated and isolating conditions in maximum security units.

4. Messes Manufactured by Mandatory Minimum Sentences

Internationally, there have been many campaigns and cases aimed at reforming the defence of self-defence to reflect the realities experienced by battered women who defend themselves and others with lethal force. After the Supreme Court of Canada handed down the Lavallee decision in 1990, CAEFS and other equality-seeking women’s groups requested a review of the cases of women who had been jailed for killing their abusers.

These efforts resulted in the establishment of the Self-Defence Review. The purpose of the Review was essentially to examine the cases of women jailed as a result of their involvement in the deaths of their abusers and recommend how they might achieve some measure of justice for women who had been convicted in Canada of homicide in circumstances where self-defence should have been considered.

CAEFS has also been involved in national consultations with women’s groups on violence against women, and has articulated the link between women’s experience of male violence and their subsequent convictions and imprisonment. In this regard, CAEFS participated in 1995, along with other women’s groups, in responding to the White Paper proposals in 1993 and in discussions regarding proposals for reform of the law of self-defence in 1995.

In 1998, the federal government released its latest consultation document on the reform of self- defence, Reforming Criminal Code Defences: Provocation, Self-Defence and Defence of Property, which included proposed reforms to the defence of provocation and defence of property as well. In the summer of 1999, CAEFS convened a national consultation with equality-seeking women’s groups to discuss the relationship between self-defence, the defence of provocation, and the mandatory minimum sentence of life imprisonment for murder.