Evidence of meeting #2 for Public Safety and National Security in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was health.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:10 p.m.
Bloc
Maria Mourani Bloc Ahuntsic, QC
Fine.
So, we are not talking about the Correctional Service of Canada, but the correctional service for British Columbia.
4:10 p.m.
Retired Warden of Alouette Correctional Centre for Women, As an Individual
Yes.
4:10 p.m.
Bloc
Maria Mourani Bloc Ahuntsic, QC
Furthermore, I would like one more clarification, Ms. Christie. You spoke about 30 incarcerations over 5 years. Did these 30 incarcerations take place in the federal system?
Then, when you found yourself in the provincial system, it would appear that things went better for you.
4:10 p.m.
Bloc
Maria Mourani Bloc Ahuntsic, QC
One more point and then I will ask my more open-ended questions.
Ms. Martin, you said in your presentation—I must confess that I do not understand this very well—that incarceration could be seen as an opportunity for inmates to improve their mental health and turn their lives around.
We visited a certain number of federal penitentiaries. We even went elsewhere, but we are talking just about Canada here. Indeed, what I saw would not help these people improve their mental health or turn their lives around. We are talking about people suffering from mental disorders. I noted that these people were given more treatment in segregation. Yes, certain federal institutions did have other ways of operating. So I'm wondering about this sentence: is incarceration a solution for people suffering from mental illness?
4:10 p.m.
Clinical Professor, Department of Family Practice and Collaborating Centre for Prison Health and Education, University of British Columbia, As an Individual
Maybe the wording is incorrect on that, but what I am saying is once you have incarcerated people that becomes an opportunity for them to improve their mental health. So therefore we should be doing everything we can in Canada to facilitate the improvement of mental health, not the worsening of mental health.
4:10 p.m.
Clinical Professor, Department of Family Practice and Collaborating Centre for Prison Health and Education, University of British Columbia, As an Individual
Does that answer your question?
4:10 p.m.
Bloc
Maria Mourani Bloc Ahuntsic, QC
Do you believe that the current correctional system—I am not referring to the provincial system, and I do not know whether you have had any experience at the federal level—as we know it, helps those individuals suffering from mental disorders and even people who have addiction problems? Do you feel that the system is tailored to suit the needs of this inmate population?
4:10 p.m.
Clinical Professor, Department of Family Practice and Collaborating Centre for Prison Health and Education, University of British Columbia, As an Individual
When I work inside the system I'm trying to regard people I see as my patients, but I think the primary objective of many staff and correctional systems is security, so that tension is always there. Obviously, individuals within the system may find certain things helpful at certain times, but I don't see that the overall ethos of the prison environment, for many prison environments, is conducive to improving mental health. Over the 16 years I've worked, I've worked with many different wardens and management systems, and I think the prison warden is the person who can influence the prison ethos.
I don't know how many of the 56 Canadian federal penitentiaries are conducive to improving mental health. Obviously, you've heard some examples from previous witnesses of things that have been successful. I think we need to identify the ones that are successful, and we need to describe them and describe what's working and laud them, commend them, and give them medals, because that's what we need to see more of.
4:10 p.m.
Bloc
Maria Mourani Bloc Ahuntsic, QC
Thank you.
For example, when people are arrested and put on trial, do you not think that, as soon as we realize that someone has a mental health problem, regardless of what crime has been committed, that this individual should be transferred to a hospital rather than a prison?
4:10 p.m.
Clinical Professor, Department of Family Practice and Collaborating Centre for Prison Health and Education, University of British Columbia, As an Individual
Frankly, most of the people I see in prison have a range of mental health issues; it's a spectrum. We all have that in the sense of how well we're coping with life. We all have mental issues at one point in our lives. The majority of people I see in the provincial system are not psychiatrically ill patients who require transferring to a hospital, but they do have difficulties with their mental health.
For example, we all use the example of Ashley Smith, because that's probably why you're studying this issue. Ashley Smith started off as a troubled teenager. Was she psychiatrically ill? No, but she did have some difficulties, and obviously her difficulties worsened with time.
I think what you're saying is once you've sentenced them, you could then suggest that they all need a therapeutic environment, yes, and they all need assistance. Can prisons provide that? With the correct warden and the correct atmosphere and with community partnerships it could be done. It means you would look at changing your ethos for correctional facilities.
4:15 p.m.
Bloc
Maria Mourani Bloc Ahuntsic, QC
I have a question for Ms. Tole.
You work at the provincial level. You understand that health comes under provincial jurisdiction. I am trying to understand how, in Canada's federal system, the Correctional Service of Canada—which is responsible for administering legislation on the correctional system and parole but has no responsibility for provincial jurisdiction—can take action to ensure that these individuals receive treatment?
I will give you an example: in England, individuals with clearly identified psychiatric mental health problems come under the purview of England's Health Act. This is a country, therefore it has a law.
Here, however, our laws vary depending on whether they come under a specific province or the federal government. Since we have these two levels of government, how can the Correctional Service of Canada intervene to administer provincial health legislation in addition to the Canada Health Act?
4:15 p.m.
Retired Warden of Alouette Correctional Centre for Women, As an Individual
I think the most plausible is to basically have an agreement with the health authorities in the provinces; then you would have a consistent level or standard of health, which would match a community health level. That's really what the province has done. They just basically have an agreement. It's not their own health system, it's an agreement with the provincial health system. That would work for the federal system also. It's just something to look at.
March 16th, 2010 / 4:15 p.m.
NDP
Don Davies NDP Vancouver Kingsway, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
First of all, I want to thank all three of you for coming out here and taking time out of your busy lives to help us better understand the problems and challenges facing us.
I also really want to take a moment to focus on the fact that we're dealing with women's mental health and substance abuse issues. As I think you know, our committee has toured a lot of facilities and focused a lot on male issues. I know there are a lot of similarities, but there are some important differences, so I thank you for bringing to us the voice of experience with women in custody.
I'm going to start off with Ms. Tole. You said that when you opened Alouette Correctional Centre for Women and you were the warden, you had the opportunity to move away from a security and control-focused model towards a more pro-social offender responsibility model, and you found that this more normalized environment made the centre safer for staff and inmates, and institutional violence and use-of-force incidents were reduced. I wonder if you could expand on why you think that happened.
4:15 p.m.
Retired Warden of Alouette Correctional Centre for Women, As an Individual
I think we basically had a physical environment that was conducive. It was a campus-style environment and it had a very large fence around it, so it certainly was secure from that perspective. We had an opportunity to start out with a small population to work with. We started with about 45, and when I left there were 144. It basically was a process of encouraging staff and gently relaxing what had come from a very restrictive environment at, which was a joint provincial and federal institution.
It was a slow process. I'd have to say to you that it is difficult for staff used to operating in a certain environment to move away from it. The continued positive reaction we got from the population was there--we literally did not have violence against staff. I won't say that we didn't have any violence. We had occasional fights between the women who were there, but it was much reduced. We had, as I mentioned, almost no self-harm.
It was just basically a process of continued engagement on the basis of the staff, so that it was dynamic security. They were out on the grounds and in the units with the women rather than sitting in an office. It was engaging the women in terms of what was going on in the centre, listening to them, involving them in the research that Dr. Martin spoke of, and continually expanding their responsibility. It wasn't without occasional problems. I'm not going to say it was perfect, because it wasn't. But we also noticed that our staff absence went from one of the highest in the province in terms of institutional staff to the lowest, at the time I left.
It is a fallacy that the more structured the environment, the safer it is. It isn't. The more confined, structured, and authoritarian the environment is, the more difficulty they have in living within that environment, and they tend to produce much more in the way of management problems. As a result, it's not a safe environment. It's unfortunate when institutions move more and more towards that--more technology, more security, more restrictive movement--because what you actually generate is a very dysfunctional population that presents a threat to the staff.
4:20 p.m.
NDP
Don Davies NDP Vancouver Kingsway, BC
Thanks.
Ms. Christie, first of all, I want to congratulate you on your success and on dealing with your addiction as well. I know that it takes a lot of courage to do that and I think it's a remarkable achievement.
You've said that you're doing in-depth interviews with aboriginal women at the federal and provincial levels of incarceration, and they're sharing their stories about accessing community health resources and about the ways their incarceration affected their mental health.
On that last part, could you tell us a bit more about what you're hearing from these women on how incarceration affected their mental health? Also, the other part of it is what we can do that may help address that situation. What would you do if you were a warden of a prison with women and you could address those issues?
4:20 p.m.
Research Assistant, Women in 2 Healing
Well, first of all, I'll talk about what we're hearing women say. I'm not going to say a lot of the words that some women say. The majority of the women we have interviewed have been at the federal level. They all say that none of their mental health needs were met in prison. They say they were disrespected. They say their culture was disrespected and therefore they were disrespected.
What was the other question?
4:20 p.m.
NDP
Don Davies NDP Vancouver Kingsway, BC
The first part was about how their mental health was affected by incarceration. The second part was on what you would do to make it better. Having been incarcerated, what would you do to help the mental health issues of women if you were a warden?
4:20 p.m.
Research Assistant, Women in 2 Healing
I would definitely be approaching corrections more like what Brenda Tole was talking about. I personally have seen a difference. There are nine members I work with who were all incarcerated at the same time in the institution that Brenda Tole was running. We're all doing well. We're all employed. We're all doing very, very well. We went from being restricted to being unrestricted. Taking the segregation out was such a huge, huge thing.
I'm just going to talk about one thing that I remember. Earlier, we were talking about fighting. This is how the jail dealt with some of the issues that came up. When I was there, there were two girls who fought. They were sent to segregation for one hour--not one night, not two days, not 16 days, but one hour--and then they were sent to conflict resolution. If they didn't deal with their differences, they were sent back to the maximum security prison. Nobody wanted to go back to maximum security prison so they dealt with their issues. It's amazing how women can actually deal with their issues if they're given the chance to deal with them.
We've been talking about bringing in the community. We need the community in the prisons. When women are in prison, how are they supposed to learn about the things they need to do on the outside? They're being taught by somebody who is dealing with them for security, you know what I mean, like the correctional officers. I'll tell you something right now. I don't want to learn about substance abuse from a correctional officer. I don't want to learn about anger management from a correctional officer. I want to learn about it from a registered counsellor or from somebody from the community, somebody who is neutral, not somebody who is going to lock my cell at night.
4:25 p.m.
Conservative
