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.
Liberal
Borys Wrzesnewskyj Liberal Etobicoke Centre, ON
Is that the general population or the female population?
Retired Warden of Alouette Correctional Centre for Women, As an Individual
I'm talking about the female population. Then I would say that a very large chunk, probably the next 50%, would be drugs and property offences, and then there's a very small percentage that are violent.
Liberal
Borys Wrzesnewskyj Liberal Etobicoke Centre, ON
So there seems to be a significantly different profile in types of crimes committed, which would seem to point to the root causes being significantly different. Just listening to your testimonies, it seems that, besides the mental health or health issues, etc., the root causes are issues of desperation. I would assume that root causes would be similar when it comes to the male population in many cases, but also there would be significantly different motivators.
Is desperation the prime motivator when you get to the root cause of why women are incarcerated?
Clinical Professor, Department of Family Practice and Collaborating Centre for Prison Health and Education, University of British Columbia, As an Individual
My experience is that most women have had very traumatic experiences. You can imagine the sort of trauma. Often when I'm listening to a woman, I have the box of kleenex between us and I'm dipping into the box of kleenex as is the woman. So there are very many traumatic experiences that contribute both to their mental health difficulties and also to their drug and/or alcohol use. So many of them are using drugs and alcohol to either control the emotions that arise from the trauma or to numb the emotions. Then they're committing crimes because of the drug and alcohol issues and/or the desperation.
Liberal
Borys Wrzesnewskyj Liberal Etobicoke Centre, ON
All this seems to further underline that perhaps a large proportion if not a large majority of incarcerated women, with the right treatment, with the right programs, can be reintegrated. Would you concur, and would you hazard a guess at a percentage?
Clinical Professor, Department of Family Practice and Collaborating Centre for Prison Health and Education, University of British Columbia, As an Individual
I would say that 90% or even 95% of the women I talk to want to turn their lives around. They want to become members of society. They want to give up their drugs. Many of them don't know how. They don't know what normal is.
Clinical Professor, Department of Family Practice and Collaborating Centre for Prison Health and Education, University of British Columbia, As an Individual
Oh, yes. They might be saying they are not quite ready yet, but they know they want to.
Liberal
Borys Wrzesnewskyj Liberal Etobicoke Centre, ON
There seems to be tremendous motivation. We seem to have different root causes. Obviously there are concrete examples of success stories. When you look at the straight monetary cost difference between $100,000-plus to incarcerate and $20,000 to provide the programming per year to reintegrate, never mind the societal cost difference between someone reoffending and someone becoming a productive member.... Those are indirect benefits as well.
I'd like to first concur with my colleague and tell you, Ms. Christie, it is tremendously courageous of you to be doing what you are doing, not just appearing here but doing the work you are doing with other women who are facing issues you have faced in the past.
Conservative
Conservative
Dave MacKenzie Conservative Oxford, ON
Thank you, Chair.
Thank you to the witnesses for being here today. We do really appreciate that.
Some of your comments are interesting, Dr. Martin, because we did go to Norway, and we did go to Britain. You talk about the studies. Interestingly, we had some of the information previously about segregation. It turned out, when we dug a little bit under the surface, they did use segregation more than what they would seem to indicate in their document. It fits with what Warden Tole is saying: nobody wants to see segregation, but there are sometimes places for it.
That being said, like everyone else here, I am impressed with Ms. Christie coming here today to tell us her story. There is a great deal we can learn. It seems to me that by the time many of these people get to the federal prison system, we have already lost. Something went wrong somewhere while growing up, being a young adult, being in correctional systems in the province, and in health care systems in some cases. Then they're into the federal system, which indicates that all of those other things haven't worked. What have we done wrong?
I am kind of appalled when I look at it. You were incarcerated 30 times in five years, which is once every two months, and then, you told us, you were in segregation and when you got out you wanted to change. You talked about the two girls who were fighting who were put in segregation, and they didn't want to go back to maximum security so they straightened their lives out. It almost seems that they needed something sharp in the way of incarceration to say “This is not the path you need to follow. You need to seek help or find help.” Am I looking at that wrongly? There were 29 times when obviously either you didn't receive what you needed or the system didn't deter you from going back.
Conservative
Dave MacKenzie Conservative Oxford, ON
I'm not saying that is your fault. That's our fault. The system doesn't work.
Research Assistant, Women in 2 Healing
I am completely in agreement that the system failed, 100%, and I'm almost 100% positive that maybe if I had been given the chance to be out of segregation, I would have been able to make it.
Brenda was talking about the time women spend in segregation. That is a really big thing. I am talking one hour, and that was for girls to cool down, not because they were being punished but for them to cool down because they were fighting. I was in segregation for 16 days at a time. That's a long time. I don't know if you have ever been segregated for half an hour or 45 minutes--
Research Assistant, Women in 2 Healing
Maybe it's something to take a look at, because when you're counting the bricks on the walls just to keep your mind from going crazy--
Conservative
Research Assistant, Women in 2 Healing
What do you mean? I've never gone back to prison.
Conservative
Dave MacKenzie Conservative Oxford, ON
No, but in the 29 times that you were in jail before that, were you segregated then?
Conservative
Dave MacKenzie Conservative Oxford, ON
So if we're looking to fix the system, what made you change the last time?
Research Assistant, Women in 2 Healing
I was sent to a prison that let me have segregation that dealt with.... I was waiting to get into prison--prisons were so full at that time--and had spent nine days detoxing in city cells, which was just wonderful. So not only was I throwing up in city cells, but I had no food and I was sleeping on metal.
By the time I got to the prison I was already detoxed, so they didn't have to keep me in there for detox. I was sent to Alouette, where I was able to come out of my shell and start looking around at the world clean. When you're sitting isolated in a cell for days and days on end and then you just get released back onto the streets, what are you supposed to do? There was no rehabilitation whatsoever.
