Thank you.

I would like to begin by acknowledging that we have the honour and privilege today of meeting on the unceded traditional territory of the Algonquin nation.

Thank you for inviting our organization to speak today on Bill C-375. I'm the director of advocacy and legal issues with the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies, and I regularly visit the prisons for women across Canada with our regional advocate teams.

CAEFS has extensive experience advancing the equality rights of women whose behaviour is or is thought to be criminalized, and a depth of knowledge concerning the interactions of such women with the legal system. CAEFS has a substantial interest in ensuring the criminal justice system operates fairly with respect to women, and that the perspective and experience of women, in particular indigenous women, are represented in its design and operation.

My remarks today are born out of my experience working closely with women at CAEFS and whom our 24 local EFrys serve. I'll do my best to do justice to the experiences of these women and to identify the issues they have raised with me.

The numbers of women in prison with mental disabilities continues to rise. Indeed, with the majority of the female prison population identified as experiencing mental health issues, it appears prisons are becoming the default option for mental health intervention. This pattern persists despite the common practice in many jurisdictions to include mental health information in pre-sentence reports. As such, it is CAEFS's position that formalizing this practice into law does not go far enough. It will not reverse or even make a dent in the current practice of incarcerating women with mental disabilities, and it will not lead to their compassionate care.

In fact, there is a risk of which there is growing evidence that women may be sentenced to prison terms because of the false perception that appropriate counselling services are available in prison. In CAEFS's experience, women sometimes receive federal sentences rather than provincial sentences because of the misconception that they will have more access to rehabilitative programming at the federal level.

This pattern is exacerbated by the gaps in mental health services in the community and the unwillingness on the part of some community-based services to accept criminalized women. We need to work on changing this.

The fact that prisons have become the accepted placements for women with mental disabilities is deeply problematic. CSC's response to women's mental health behaviour is overwhelmingly security driven and damaging. Incarcerated women who need quality mental health care end up receiving punishment in its place. It is CAEFS's position that this substitution is unacceptable in Canada.

When prison officials adopt counselling services like those seen in community-based programs, they often lack a gender, race, and class analysis of women's experiences and needs, and become part of the punitive regime. This is a mistake. A good example of this is the heavy reliance by CSC on cognitive behavioural therapy, a technique that is not meant to address past issues or provide supportive counselling.

For most women in prison, mental health problems and their occurrence, for that matter, are intractably linked to a lifetime of being subjected to poverty, systemic racism, and physical and/or sexual abuse. Within prison, women are frequently punished for responses to trauma, which are perceived by CSC as simply bad behaviour. In too many cases, CSC's approach to mental health can be deadly. For example, current CSC policy prescribes that prisoners at risk of self-injury or suicide be placed in a segregation cell on what they call mental health observation. It's segregation by another name.

CSC's position that segregation is a status and not a place, and that individuals on mental health observation are not in segregation, demonstrates its inability to recognize that confinement of this kind escalates women's distress and can lead—and has led—to further and more lethal forms of self-harm and suicide attempts. The jury at the Ashley Smith inquest made two concrete recommendations that had the potential to lead to significant changes in CSC's approach to self-injury back in 2009. Both were rejected by CSC.

In 2016, Terry Baker committed suicide while under mental health observation in a segregation cell at the Grand Valley Prison for women. Just days prior to her death, Ms. Baker had been bound to her bed for a prolonged period of time, which is another common practice used on women at risk of self-harming.

CSC has been on the same trajectory for decades, without any signs of real change, despite several reports, commissions, inquests, and recommendations to support change. This trajectory, which is security-driven, discriminatory, and harmful, is antithetical to the treatment of mental health issues. CSC's classification scheme confines indigenous women and women with mental health problems in maximum security and segregation because of their histories, not in spite of them.

Unemployment, lack of education, family instability, and homelessness prior to incarceration all lead to higher ratings on the custody rating scale, a tool that was developed over 25 years ago based on a sample of white male prisoners, which results in overly high classifications when used on women. This has been reported on for decades. Women's needs, especially those with mental disabilities, are translated to risks. Maximum security is a form of segregation that separates women with complex needs from the general population and therefore, from programming, meaningful work opportunities, family visits, and important mental health supports. In short, placement in maximum security greatly diminishes these women's chances of obtaining parole and successfully reintegrating into the general population and ultimately, into their communities.

The following are recommendations that, unlike the current bill, could amount to real and significant changes to the circumstances of women with mental disabilities.

First, we could support the UN special rapporteur on violence against women recommendation that preference be given “in every case, to alternatives to imprisonment for prisoners with disabling mental health by utilizing [section 29 of the CCRA] to transfer prisoners to mental health services, facilities, or psychiatric hospitals.” We've reported on this before. There are currently only two mental health beds designated for women.

In the meantime, while women with mental disabilities remain incarcerated, we should transfer the responsibility for the health care, including for mental health, of prisoners from public safety to the ministry of health, as has been done in British Columbia, Alberta, and Nova Scotia.

We should legislate an absolute ban on the use of solitary confinement; segregation, including maximum security in women's prisons; medical observation; mental observation; and all other related forms of isolation of incarcerated young women and women with mental health issues. This is something that has been supported by the special rapporteur on torture.

We should create a mechanism for the external judicial oversight of CSC and specifically, in relation to decisions regarding segregation placements, placement on mental health observation, and any other forms of isolation and the use of physical restraints, like Pinel restraints.

We should create a mechanism through which judges can revisit the sentences they impose if legalities, gross mismanagement, or unfairness in the administration of a sentence renders that sentence harsher than that imposed by the court. A reduction of the period of imprisonment may be granted to reflect that the punishment administered was more punitive than the one intended. That's a recommendation coming out of the 1996 Arbour report.

Overall, we hope that you recognize that the relatively low number of women in prison as compared to men is an opportunity to innovate, rather than to ignore. Women prisoners, as a group, are low risk, and the potential gains from progressive and substantive changes to the law for this group, and for their families and communities, could be immeasurable.

Thank you.

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