Thank you, honourable members, for inviting me to be here today.
Since 1978, CAEFS has been the leading national organization supporting women and gender-diverse people at all stages of legal system involvement. We conduct monthly visits into Canada's federal penitentiaries for women. Our 22 Elizabeth Fry Societies nationally provide a range of services in prison and the community, including operating halfway houses, providing court support and diversion programs, and beyond.
Through this work, we come to know closely the people whom this bill impacts. We welcome Bill C-40, but caution that amendments are needed to ensure the act can meaningfully respond to miscarriages of justice.
Most women and gender-diverse people who become incarcerated are critically disadvantaged. The system is in crisis, with half of the people in prisons designated for women being indigenous. Much attention has been called to the systemic and social factors that lead women and gender-diverse people to be wrongfully convicted. The justice system rests upon its ability to be just, yet we posit that, presently, miscarriages of justice for the populations we serve are systemic. This is in part because conditions in our provincial jails are deplorable, characterized by frequent lockdowns, isolation, poor food sources, dismal health care, very expensive, restrictive access to family, and beyond.
Many disclose to us that, up against losing their children, employment and housing, they plead guilty, regardless of whether or not they are, in order to get out faster. From our perspective, pleading out is a very common experience. Individuals make the best decisions they can within a forced choice, where no outcome is a good one. We receive almost constant requests to help people redress their convictions. Many share how their previous lawyers discouraged them from filing appeals and often encouraged them to plead guilty in the first place. We direct people toward innocence projects and watch the lengthy process unfold. Often, we see them give up.
The pressure to be guilty doesn't stop at a verdict for the wrongfully convicted. Once sentenced, women and gender-diverse people who maintain their innocence experience a number of punishments and exclusions, because they are not seen to be taking responsibility. This begins with being denied access to core correctional programming, which is a precursor for access to a host of additional programs and services, and a requirement to move to less restrictive security classifications.
Much of what it takes to survive incarceration—visiting family, accessing work and education, and accessing the legislated process of gradual release—is significantly restricted for people who maintain innocence, due to their being kept in higher-security classifications. Also, as most supportive processes are only conditionally approved, prison officials must complete assessments for each decision. Primary considerations are the level of responsibility and institutional adjustment a person demonstrates. It's very difficult to be assessed as “adjusting well” in an institution whose programs you cannot participate in. Doing well in prison and reintegrating into the community via parole becomes next to impossible. People become pressured to indicate guilt in order to successfully navigate the system, or they maintain their innocence and face a harsher version of incarceration, which elevates the risk of chronic adverse mental and physical health outcomes and institutionalization.
We submitted an associated brief that emphasizes amendments that ensure incarcerated applicants aren't punished as a result of pursuing redress. It endorses the UBC innocence project's key amendment to legislate the possibility of exceptional review where appeals have not been exhausted, and to legislate defined timelines associated with the commission. Perhaps nothing could be underscored more than the irreversible impacts on the life course of wrongfully convicted people.
At present, wrongful convictions take years or, more generally, decades to overturn, and life is simply not that long. We witness the cumulative loss experienced, especially for those with long or life sentences—loss of mental and physical health, and loss of family and social connections. Time is an irreturnable resource to take from people, and we don't often contemplate its associated costs: the loss of milestones and rites of passage—