{"id":25508,"date":"2014-09-12T12:28:03","date_gmt":"2014-09-12T04:28:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=25508"},"modified":"2014-09-12T00:30:23","modified_gmt":"2014-09-11T16:30:23","slug":"prison-suicide-report-harshly-critical-of-corrections-canada-procedures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2014\/09\/12\/prison-suicide-report-harshly-critical-of-corrections-canada-procedures\/","title":{"rendered":"Prison suicide report harshly critical of Corrections Canada procedures"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>
The Toronto East Detention Centre in Scarborough. Photo by GTD Aquitaine<\/a> \/ Wikimedia Commons.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

OTTAWA\u2014The federal prison watchdog says Corrections Canada must stop isolating mentally ill, suicidal or self-harming prisoners, saying inmates in segregation units can all too easily kill themselves.<\/p>\n

In a report released on\u00a0World\u00a0Suicide Prevention Day, Howard Sapers said almost half of the suicides reviewed by his Office of the Correctional Investigator took place in segregation cells supposedly under close monitoring.<\/p>\n

Sapers\u2019 office examined 30 suicides in federal penitentiaries between April 2011 and March 2014.<\/p>\n

Twenty-five of those prisoners hanged themselves, 14 of them while they were in solitary confinement. Only one of those 14 was being \u201cactively managed\u201d under suicide watch at the time, the report found.<\/p>\n

Nineteen of the 25 prisoners who hanged themselves had previously attempted suicide; seven of them had tried to kill themselves more than twice.<\/p>\n

Some had expressed a desire to kill themselves but were regarded by corrections staff as being \u201cmanipulative,\u201d the report found.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am concerned that Correctional Service of Canada continues to rely on long-term segregation placements as a means to manage symptoms or behaviours associated with mental illness, suicidal ideation or self-harming,\u201d Sapers said in a statement accompanying the report.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis practice is unsafe and should be expressly prohibited.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sapers urged more rigorous screening of high-risk prisoners, better information sharing and more timely access to mental health services.<\/p>\n

Jason Tamming, a spokesman for Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney, said the government has acknowledged Sapers\u2019 report.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur Conservative government believes that convicted criminals belong behind bars and that a prison is not always the most appropriate place to treat those with severe mental illness,\u201d he said in an email.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why, he added, the government announced a mental health action plan for federal offenders, something Tamming said should \u201censure that the correctional system can effectively correct criminal behaviour.\u201d<\/p>\n

There was no specific mention made of any of the report\u2019s harshest criticisms, including its observation that several prisoners were able to kill themselves in high-surveillance areas of various federal prisons.<\/p>\n

The report found that there are still \u201cdangerous in-cell suspension points accessible to inmates, including in segregation units\u201d despite a 2010 directive instructing prisons to remove things like shelving, electrical outlets and air vents that can used in a hanging.<\/p>\n

One inmate took his life by hanging himself from the corner of a smoke detector\u2014just one of a \u201cmultitude\u201d of suspension points in his cell, according to investigators.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is difficult to comprehend why some of these cells are still in use for segregated inmates, especially in some of the older institutions,\u201d the report said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe CSC must account for why it continues to accept such a high degree of organizational risk, one that gives potentially suicidal inmates placed in segregation access to the means (and opportunity) to take their life.\u201d<\/p>\n

The report also pointed to problems with the investigative process after inmates die in prison. The practice of corrections staff investigating other corrections staff lacks \u201cboth functional and organization independence,\u201d the report said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is rare for CSC investigators to go the extra step to identify how the death might have been averted had staff acted or decided in a different manner,\u201d it continued.<\/p>\n

\u201cLessons learned and corrective measures from even a single suicide should have a lasting impact on the organization.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wayne Easter, the Liberal critic for public safety, said Sapers\u2019 annual admonishments to the government about the state of prisons\u2014often involving the same trouble areas every year\u2014prove the Conservatives pay short shrift to his reports.<\/p>\n

\u201cEnsuring the cells are suicide-proof, that\u2019s a relatively small thing,\u201d Easter said. \u201cIf that hasn\u2019t been rectified in three years, then it shows that Canada\u2019s correction investigator is not being taken seriously by the minister or the commissioner. These are reports that should not, must not, be gathering dust.\u201d<\/p>\n

Randall Garrison, the NDP public safety critic, agreed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are basically the same issues that the government has been told about since 2008, with no action from the government,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut in a climate of a rising prison population and fewer resources, it\u2019s very difficult for corrections to do even the urgent things that the correctional investigator has been recommending.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

OTTAWA\u2014The federal prison watchdog says Corrections Canada must stop isolating mentally ill, suicidal or self-harming prisoners, saying inmates in segregation …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":25509,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,1145],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news-ca","category-headline","mauthors-lee-anne-goodman","mauthors-the-canadian-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25508\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}