Thank you.

Part of our work is monitoring the conditions of confinement in the five prisons designated for women across the country. It is there we meet the people who have been harmed and continue to be harmed by existing legislation. The majority of these women and gender-diverse people face complex mental health issues and unresolved addictions. They properly belong in the health care system, not the prison system. If and when they are released, their unresolved issues will be compounded by the strong stigma that follows those with criminal records.

When you walk into a maximum-security unit in these prisons, you see that they are full of indigenous women, gender-diverse people and two-spirited people. It is a sobering fact, one that should make us all take pause: 50% of all women and gender-diverse people in prisons in Canada are indigenous. In these prisons, we meet so many Black women and gender-diverse people whose neighbourhoods have been over-surveilled, criminalized and ultimately failed by multiple systems and who end up being overly punished by our legal system. In these prisons, we meet the countless survivors of sexual and physical harm, dispelling the false dichotomy that continues to be raised around perpetrators and survivors of violence. It is also in these prisons where, overwhelmingly, we meet women and gender-diverse people who are simply trying to survive poverty for themselves and for their families. They often cannot afford food, electricity, clothing for their children and their vital needs.

Lack of judicial discretion to depart from required sentencing has put them there. Legislation that does not recognize the discrimination impacting their social histories has put them there. We presently have a system that punishes through a debunked perspective: Increased punishment for certain crimes, through mandatory minimum penalties, will deter people from participating in those crimes. Yet, the implicit social messaging we are given in Canada, through the adverse impacts created by mandatory minimum penalties, is that, if you are poor or from a marginalized community, you are undeserving of a fair chance and undeserving of rehabilitation.

Transcript

Discussions (0)