Public Safety Committee on Nov. 8th, 2018

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

I understand the whole issue, but there are times when, for the safety of an inmate, other inmates or staff, there are limited options. What alternatives exist? Will the structured intervention units still meet the expectations that for individuals who are incarcerated, either for harming themselves or harming others or staff, there will still be those things in place?

[Catherine Latimer]

The John Howard Society's position is that the abolition, the out-and-out abolition, of administrative segregation is not a good idea. Administrative segregation is a necessary tool as a short-term solution to—

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

You call it “administrative”. Some people have said “disciplinary”. Is that the same thing or is it different?

[Catherine Latimer]

Disciplinary is different.

[Lawrence Da Silva]

There are two different forms of administrative segregation—

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

All right. I'm sorry for interrupting you.

[Catherine Latimer]

Our view is that you need to have the capacity to immediately separate prisoners who are exhibiting violence with each other or towards the guards, any others or themselves. You need to be able to do that fairly quickly. It's an emergency short-term situation. It would be better to work with the existing framework of administrative segregation—

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

So we can't eliminate it...?

[Catherine Latimer]

Pardon me?

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

It's unwise to eliminate the idea of segregation, period.

[Lawrence Da Silva]

He's speaking of 31(3)(a), in the original existing legislation for the—

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

If I just heard you correctly, ma'am, you said that it's unwise to eliminate segregation.

[Catherine Latimer]

Altogether...? Absolutely, yes. We want to see—

[Savannah Gentile]

I'm sorry to interrupt. I just want to say that I can't speak to the men's side of things, but on the women's side of things, I would say that it could be eliminated completely. In our experience, when women are dealt with in legal and respectful ways, situations can be de-escalated. They have dynamic security for that reason. Dynamic security is at the current moment not practised—

[Lawrence Da Silva]

We're talking about murderers and people who have been in jail and who are security risks. There has to be some credit back to the people who are protecting the public to be able to separate people where there's a risk of real violence. The shit that I've been through, okay, you can't—

[A voice]

[Inaudible—Editor]

[Lawrence Da Silva]

Okay. You don't speak for everybody, because you can't speak for the guards that—

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

We're going to have to leave it there. This is getting pretty animated here.

[Lawrence Da Silva]

There's a little bad blood between us and Elizabeth Fry because we don't agree with the abolishment of segregation.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Right, but we're going to stay within the confines of the time we have.

Mr. Dubé, please, you have seven minutes.

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Beloeil—Chambly, QC]

Thank you, Chair.

I want to first of all thank you for being here and certainly thank folks who've experienced this situation first-hand for having the courage to come before the committee. I think it's something that is worth commending.

I do want to go to a few things specifically related to what I had a chance to ask the minister and officials about on Tuesday.

The first thing—and it was brought up in testimony—was this question about opportunities outside of the cell. I tried to ask the commissioner about this, but perhaps I wasn't clear in my questions. I was using the example of how if it's five o'clock in the morning at the peak cold season or if it's a rainstorm in the summer or whatever, you're not going to get the same kind of opportunities as, say, if you're going out on a sunny day or whatever. The answer I got was that there would be opportunities outside of the cell, just in a different way.

Is there not a concern, given that the legislation does talk about noting refusals for those opportunities, that there doesn't really seem to be, on the flip side, a safeguard for the reasonableness of the opportunities, in particular, for the mental health objectives that those opportunities seek to achieve?

I'm just wondering if both organizations could comment on that.

[Catherine Latimer]

Many of the men I have interviewed who have been in administrative segregation have told me that they're been presented with opportunities to go to the yard at six o'clock in the morning when it's freezing cold and dark outside, and when they decline, that's it. That's the end of their opportunity to be out of their cell for the day.

So I agree. I think if the opportunity to be out of the cell being presented is unreasonable—and you're going to find that, and I think Mr. Da Silva can probably speak to this more—and you have prisoners who would previously have been isolated being able to associate with each other, you're going to have the question of incompatible prisoners milling about together. Some prisoners will not want to go out there and participate in the general milling about in those structured intervention units. Those would be reasonable grounds for refusing, but, de facto, you're going to end up with people being isolated in their cells and experiencing the suffering that comes from prolonged segregation if they can't exercise a reasonable opportunity to get out of their cells.

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Beloeil—Chambly, QC]

I don't know if you have a response to that as well.

[Savannah Gentile]

I would just concur with what Ms. Latimer said. If opportunities are provided, then that is the end of the story if a woman doesn't take that opportunity at that moment, and she may not get another that day. Often the minimum of two hours out is not followed currently.

[Alia Pierini]

I just want to touch on the fact that there are actually lots of women inside who are not articulate enough to reach out for help when they need it, so they'll just deny that help. That's a form of self-harm in a way, that they don't ask for the help, that they sit in there, that they isolate themselves. Then they're in a way, yes, choosing for their mental health to deteriorate, but it's a fact that they're still deteriorating in there when they shouldn't be.