Segregation or solitary confinement has been a feature of modern corrections as long as we've had penitentiaries. The essential questions around segregation are who goes in, the length of time they stay there, and the circumstances under which they get out.
Segregation is being used by the Correctional Service of Canada sometimes to provide respite for staff and sometimes to provide time out for decision-making because people don't know what else to do, but the fact is that the Correctional Service does not have as part of its mandate adding to the punishment that was imposed by the court. Segregation continues to be the most austere form of custody in Canada, and the law requires that choices made by the Correctional Service of Canada need to reflect the principles of the least restrictive measures necessary.
Now, there have been some changes in the wording of the CCRA, and we can talk about that as well, but the bottom line remains that the Correctional Service of Canada has a legal obligation to ensure that they're not being more restrictive than they need to be in the management of the sentence.
The alternative to segregation is always general population. For some offenders, that may mean other forms of security or it may mean other forms of monitoring. For some significantly mentally ill offenders, it may mean transferring out to purpose-built psychiatric or forensic facilities. We're saying that there need to be hard caps on the use of segregation and there needs to be better external review of hard-cap segregation.