Fighting Solitary Confinement

The federal government has finally agreed to stop fighting CCLA and has withdrawn its appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada against an Ontario decision prohibiting prolonged solitary confinement.. CCLA is relieved by this important news, which comes after years of advocacy both inside and outside the courts.. The dangers of solitary confinement – and prolonged solitary in particular – are well known and well-documented, and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association has been fighting the government’s solitary confinement rules and practices for years.

CCLA advocated on this issue, bringing an international expert on solitary before the jury at the Ashley Smith inquest jury; CCLA, has reached out to government actors on several occasions; we have spoken out publicly against various corrections bills that did not fix the problem; and we have been fighting in the courts for over 5 years.

CCLA successfully challenged the solitary confinement regime known as administrative segregation, first at the Ontario Superior Court on the basis of a lack of independent review.

We were successful again at the Ontario Court of Appeal which found that the practice of prolonged solitary confinement (over 15 days) constitutes cruel and unusual treatment, violating s.. 12 the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Canada appealed the Court of Appeal decision several months ago, but today informed us that it was dropping its appeal.

This is an important victory for every person who is or has been held in solitary, and it has been a long time coming.

One of the most well known of these was a teenager named Ashley Smith whose story you may be familiar with. By fifteen she had shown behavioural problems by throwing crabapples at a mailman, trespassing, and other small incidents. She was undiagnosed at the time and would end up spending much of her youth in juvenile detention facilities for minor offences.

Mental health supports and rehabilitation opportunities were not adequately provided, and she was continually penalized for various behaviours, including self-harm, all of which led to a negative spiral of behaviours, consequences, and reactions.

At the tender and terrified age of 18, she was considered a “difficult” inmate, transferred into an adult federal penitentiary, and placed in solitary where she continued to self-harm, often by tying ligatures around her neck. The tragic end of her story is well-known. The warden at the prison decided that Ashley was seeking attention – which may in fact be true, as she must have been desperate for human contact – and ordered prison officials not to enter Ashley’s cell unless she had stopped breathing. And so, on October 19 2007, four prison officials stood outside Ashley’s cell and watched as she tied a ligature around her neck for the final time and stopped breathing.