Evidence of meeting #34 for Justice and Human Rights in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was women.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:30 p.m.
Conservative
4:30 p.m.
Conservative
Bob Dechert Conservative Mississauga—Erindale, ON
Yes, I had a follow-up question.
There has been some talk in other sessions at this committee about the retroactivity of the bill and the impact that would have on the potential rehabilitation of people who are currently incarcerated for murder or serving life sentences for murder.
It seems to me that the argument has been made that if you can't apply after your 15th, 17th, 19th, 21st, 23rd year you won't be a good prisoner. You won't try to rehabilitate yourself. It would seem to me that if you have two kicks at the can, or two opportunities to get out, at year 15 and year 20, or else you are going all the way to 25 before you can apply again, you might actually work a little harder at your rehabilitation and might actually be more of a model prisoner.
What's your comment on that?
4:30 p.m.
Executive Director, Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies
I think some people would think that way, but I think the challenge often is, particularly for people serving life sentences, that they are not even allowed to participate in programs until their eligibility dates. Quite frankly, my fear would be that it could be another excuse not to provide those programs at earlier dates.
We also know that the longer people spend in the most austere conditions without those sorts of programs the more entrenched they may become in their thinking. So I think it's in the interest of public safety for all prisoners, particularly those serving life sentences and those who are in for some of the more serious crimes, to be able to participate in programs at earlier dates rather than later dates and to entrench a different model.
I think just the sheer numbers we're talking about will mean the opposite.
4:30 p.m.
Conservative
4:30 p.m.
Conservative
Bob Dechert Conservative Mississauga—Erindale, ON
I noted it's one of the stated principles of the Elizabeth Fry Society that women who are criminalized should not be imprisoned and that all efforts should be made to prevent women from being incarcerated and to facilitate the earliest community integration of those who are sentenced to a term of imprisonment.
In your view, should women ever be imprisoned?
4:30 p.m.
Executive Director, Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies
Our view is that the way prisons are currently used exacerbates the very conditions that led to most of those women being criminalized. So we would like to see alternatives to the way we currently imprison. So those who are dangerous and need to be separated need to have different types of separation.
4:30 p.m.
Conservative
Bob Dechert Conservative Mississauga—Erindale, ON
What would you do with a dangerous multiple murdering offender who happened to be a woman?
4:30 p.m.
Executive Director, Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies
As all the heads of corrections determined in the mid-nineties, 75% of those who are currently serving sentences could probably be in the community, being held accountable, and contributing in other ways. Then we would be able to focus on those who are truly causing grief in the community and what we could do differently.
For instance, we're actively discussing having forensic, secure treatment options available for some of the women I know, which doesn't mean the people are out in the community, but it means they're not in a segregation cell with no--
4:30 p.m.
Conservative
Bob Dechert Conservative Mississauga—Erindale, ON
You think they should be in a psychiatric facility or something like that?
4:30 p.m.
Conservative
Bob Dechert Conservative Mississauga—Erindale, ON
You mentioned earlier the number of women who are currently serving life sentences. What percentage of them do you think should be released today?
4:30 p.m.
Executive Director, Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies
It would depend. There was a time when I knew every single woman in the federal prison system because I went every month to the Prison for Women.
4:30 p.m.
Conservative
Bob Dechert Conservative Mississauga—Erindale, ON
Can you make a guess at the percentage, ballpark, as to who should be let out?
4:30 p.m.
Executive Director, Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies
Corrections say lifers are the easiest to manage and the least likely to pose challenges in the prison setting, so it would probably be based on their recommendations. The staff who work with them on a day-to-day basis say many of them could be in the community contributing, but for their sentence they cannot be. So that's certainly what I hear consistently when I go into the prisons. I don't go as often now; I only go to each of them once or twice a year. I hear it from policy-makers as well.
Many times staff will say that when they have lifers in their unit, people serving life sentences, in fact they're the most stable.
4:30 p.m.
Conservative
Bob Dechert Conservative Mississauga—Erindale, ON
Do you have similar views about men who are serving life sentences? What percentage of them do you think should be set free?
4:30 p.m.
Executive Director, Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies
In terms of the men who are in the system I know that many corrections people have similar views about men, not all of them but certainly some of them, depending on the context.
Certainly the context in which many of the women I know who have been involved in the homicides are often very different from my experience when I worked with men.
4:35 p.m.
Conservative
Bob Dechert Conservative Mississauga—Erindale, ON
Why would you say the court would have imposed a first-degree murder sentence on them in the first place if they were victims themselves and therefore are not a threat to society and should in your view be perhaps released or dealt with in some other way?
4:35 p.m.
Executive Director, Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies
I teach a whole course on that at law school. We use some of the cases I've worked on and some that I haven't that are still unfolding. When you have someone with an intellectual disability who asks someone to please stop her being beaten up regularly and the guy says to give him $100 and he'll do it and he does it and she is convicted of first-degree murder, I do think that's a problem. Almost everybody who has dealt with that woman believes it's a problem. Yet she serves a sentence for first-degree murder because she said yes, she did say that. She didn't understand the implications, that it amounted to a contract killing, and that's why she is serving a sentence for first-degree murder.
November 4th, 2010 / 4:35 p.m.
Conservative
Rick Norlock Conservative Northumberland—Quinte West, ON
Thank you very much.
I'll just carry on with the same line of questioning, only we'll move from the principles to the goals: “To increase public awareness and promotion of decarceration for women”, and the second of four goals is “To reduce the numbers of women who are criminalized and imprisoned in Canada”.
I think you answered that fairly well. You said that you believe that—and I made a couple of quick notes—most women who are currently incarcerated in our prisons should not be there in the first place.
4:35 p.m.
Executive Director, Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies
In my experience of working in and around the system with young people, men and women, for the last 27 years, I would agree with that. It's part of why women are the fastest-growing prison population yet not perceived as the greatest risk to public safety. Women who are poor, who are doing things for which they can be criminalized to put food on the table, to pay the rent, are in prison. We know there are women who carry drugs across borders for all kinds of reasons who are in prison. We know that the majority of those are not perceived as an ongoing risk to public safety.
That doesn't mean we don't think they should be held accountable. That's why we talk about community-based options, where they can be contributing to the community and being held accountable without it being the kind of drain that the Parliamentary Budget Officer has articulated is the drain when we unnecessarily incarcerate people, rather than hold them accountable and allow them to contribute to the community in different ways.
4:35 p.m.
Conservative
Rick Norlock Conservative Northumberland—Quinte West, ON
Thank you.
If I'm not mistaken, in most courts, before a person is sentenced, there's a pre-sentence report, and in that pre-sentence report there usually is availability of a review of the person's background, including their social status, including some of the issues they've dealt with in their life, and the courts must take that pre-sentence report into account when they sentence. So the court when it sentences them is already aware that they may have been economically disadvantaged, that they may have come from a broken family, that they may have had some substance abuse issues, that their husband may not have been the husband he should or could have been, and that they have been to some extent not able to enjoy some of the things in life that other people have, and the court takes that into consideration when it does the sentencing. Is that not correct?
4:35 p.m.
Executive Director, Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies
I think it's increasingly not correct. If you look at the number of women who are imprisoned, many of them have pled guilty to the charges for all kinds of reasons. Sometimes they believe that they won't have a fair process. They often take responsibility that exceeds their responsibility. There has been some work done by Dr. Patricia Montour, and others from the Native Women's Association in particular, on some of those issues. Certainly there's growing research around the tendency of women to hyper-responsibilize—take more responsibility for their actions than necessarily even the law would require.
Also, because of cuts in resources we have places, for instance, we can't even get Gladue reports, or pre-sentence reports done, and certainly if it's not seen as an unusual case, it's increasingly more difficult to get those sorts of reports. So I think you would find that the times where we used to have more routine pre-sentence reports are not necessarily the case, and certainly not in all jurisdictions.
4:40 p.m.
Conservative
Rick Norlock Conservative Northumberland—Quinte West, ON
By that you're saying that not only do they have insufficient pre-sentence reports, they're pleading guilty when they shouldn't plead guilty, so therefore they're not getting the appropriate or correct legal advice from their lawyers—
