Canada is Torturing Inmates with Solitary Confinement, Report Finds

Link to Vice Article

Link to Report by Anthony Doob and Jane Sprott

"Nearly one-in-ten federal inmates who are placed in the 'structured intervention units' designed by the Trudeau government to replace solitary confinement cells are actually being tortured, a new report says.

The new research confirms what inmates and prisoner advocates have been saying for years: Canada isn't following its own laws, various court rulings, or international standards around the treatment of inmates. It is even violating a UN convention on torture that it helped write.

The new report, authored by criminologists Anthony Doob and Jane Sprott, called the findings 'very disturbing,'

The study looked at how often inmates were placed in those cells, how long they spent there, and whether they received any meaningful human contact during their stay."

Solitary Confinement Continues in Canada Under a Different Name

Link to Article

Reports by Anthony Doob and Jane Sprott:

Understanding the Operation of Correctional Service Canada's Structured Intervention Units: Some Preliminary Findings

Is there Clear Evidence that the Problems that have been Identified with the Operation of Correctional Service Canada's "Structured Intervention Units" were Caused by the COVID-19 Outbreak? An Examination of Data from Correctional Service Canada

"Exactly one year ago, in November 2019, Structured Intervention Units (SIUs) were implemented by the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) in federal prisons to replace the old solitary confinement system. The new regime was supposed to abolish what is typically defined as segregation. Individuals placed in an SIU would receive four hours out of their cells and two hours of meaningful human contact. Solitary confinement is often defined as isolation for 22 hours or more in a given day and no more than two hours of human contact.

However, an independent report using CSC data released at the end of October 2020 shows that SIUs are in fact solitary confinement under a different name and with fewer restrictions."

The Cruelty of Supermax Detention and the Case for a Hard-Time Sentencing Discount

Link to Full Text

"...In this Article, we make recommendations regarding the manner in which prison conditions should impact the length of a prison term. We suggest that for most prisoners, every day spent in supermax conditions should result in two days’ credit towards the expiration of the prison term. Hard-time credits are justified by the principle of proportionality, which stipulates that the seriousness of the crime should be matched by the hardship of the penalty."

Association of Restrictive Housing During Incarceration with Mortality after Release

Link to Full Text 

"Question:   Is restrictive housing, otherwise known as solitary confinement, during incarceration associated with an increased risk of mortality after release into the community?

Findings:   This cohort study included 229 274 people who were released from incarceration in North Carolina from 2000 to 2015. Compared with individuals who were incarcerated and not placed in restrictive housing, individuals who spent any time in restrictive housing were 24% more likely to die in the first year after release, especially from suicide (78% more likely) and homicide (54% more likely); they were also 127% more likely to die of an opioid overdose in the first 2 weeks after release.

Meaning:   The results of this study suggest that exposure to restrictive housing as a condition of confinement is associated with an increased risk of death during community reentry."

Solitary Use Declines in Some States, but for Some Inmates, It Lasts Three Years: Study
"The number of people in solitary confinement has decreased in more than two dozen states since 2013, but increased in 11 states, according to a new nationwide survey.

In the fourth of a series of research projects co-authored by the Association of State Correctional Administrators (ASCA) and the Arthur Liman Center at Yale Law School, researchers found that the criteria for placing people in solitary—also called 'restrictive housing'—had narrowed since the previous study published in 2013.

About a quarter of the jurisdictions responding to survey questions, found that nearly 27 per cent of inmates were placed in in restrictive housing for three months to a year. Some 3,721 people (9.1 percent of 41,061 people) were held for more than three years, and of that number, 1,950 were reported to have been in restrictive housing for more than six years.

Among the 33 jurisdictions reporting on race and ethnicity among male prisoners in the total custodial population and in restrictive housing, Black men comprised 46.1% of the male restrictive housing population, as compared to 42.5% of the total male custodial population in those jurisdictions."

Link to the Full-Text Study
 

Data on Inmates in Ontario Being Made Available to the Public
"The Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services has conducted a series of point-in-time reviews which includes inmates in segregation who have possible mental health conditions. The first two reviews examined whether and when various standard procedures such as mental health screening, physician referrals, and mental health reassessments, occurred for the identified inmates. The ministry also committed to doing a further review of screening for mental health with inmates who were segregated, at six facilities chosen by the Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC)."

Review of the Federal Bureau of Prisons' Use of Restrictive Housing for Inmates with Mental Illness 
 "The Federal bureau of Prisons (BOP) is responsible for confining offenders in environments that are safe, humane, cost-efficient, and appropriately secure.  To do so, the BOP utilizes various forms or Restrictive Housing Unit (RHU) to confine certain inmates, including those with mental illness.  However, according to recent research and reports, as well as the BOP's own policy, confinement in RHUs, even for relatively short periods of time, can adversely affect inmates' mental health and be particularly harmful for inmates with mental illness....

 The Office of the Inspector General conducted this review to examine the BOP's use of RHUs for inmates with mental illness, including trends in the use of restrictive housing and the screening, treatment, and monitoring of inmates with mental illness who are housed in RHUs.  We found significant issues with the adequacy of the BOP's policies and its implementation efforts in this critical area."
 

UN Report Compares Solitary Confinement Practices in the U.S. and Around the World
"Last week, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Juan E. Méndez, presented a report to the General Assembly detailing and comparing solitary confinement practices around the world....

The report, Seeing into Solitary: A Review of the Laws and Policies of Certain Nations Regarding Solitary Confinement of Detainees... includes within its scope 35 jurisdictions, including eight U.S. states (California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Maine, New York, Pennsylvania, and Texas) and twenty-six countries, including the U.S. federal prison system and immigration detention system.

Seeing into Solitary builds on a prior groundbreaking report by Méndez, presented to the UN in 2011, that for the first time declared that solitary confinement may amount to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment and in some cases torture, and may thus, under certain conditions, be prohibited under international law. In that 2011 report, Méndez further called for a categorical ban on subjecting juveniles and people with mental illness to solitary confinement, and to end the practice of prolonged and indefinite solitary confinement."

Administrative Segregation in U.S. Prisons
"...Across the political spectrum, there is growing concern about the efficacy and utility of administrative segregation practices, particularly those that involve extended solitary confinement, and growing support for finding ways to safely reduce its use across correctional systems.  In 2006, the bipartisan Commission on Safety and Abuse in America's Prisons, co-chaired by the Honorable John J. Gibbons and the former U.S. Attorney General, Nicholas de B. Katzenbach, noted that the rapid increase in the use of solitary confinement across the country had outpaced the remarkable growth in overall correctional populations....  The Commission deemed solitary confinement both expensive and counterproductive and recommended limiting its use...."

How to get out of Solitary - One Step at a Time
"For many policy makers and activists, curbing the use of solitary confinement is a moral imperative: Depriving prisoners of human contact exacerbates and even produces mental illness, increases the risk of suicide, and generally engenders a sense of hopelessness. But for the nation’s prison administrators and officers—whether their motivations come from political pressure, court orders, the high cost of solitary cells, or genuine human concern—the problem is practical. Many of those in solitary are mentally ill or were placed there for their own protection and can be shuffled out quickly. But what about the prisoners who landed there by attacking other inmates or officers?

Prison is an environment that breeds antagonism and psychologists have long agreed that solitary confinement only exacerbates a cycle of recalcitrance and retribution. Prisoners resist their punishments, thereby driving officers to punish them more. At Alger [Correctional Facility], the staff found it could reverse this process simply by giving prisoners a reason not to be violent.

Since it began in 2009, Alger’s Incentives in Segregation program has allowed the prison to transform one of its three 88-man segregation wings into a general-population wing. The program has spread to multiple prisons in the state, and the daily average number of Michigan prisoners in administrative segregation has dropped by nearly 20 percent, from 1,204 in 2008 to 982 in 2013."

Research Report: Isolation & Solitary Confinement of Children in the English Youth Justice Secure Estate  https://t.co/nZVqOskueF

— Crim Library UTL (@CrimLib) October 23, 2015

Vice: The Prison Issue  http://t.co/Why6QiWADp

— Crim Library UTL (@CrimLib) October 15, 2015

Carleton PhD student creates new tool for reducing prison segregation http://t.co/n848toWtb0 via @metrotoronto

— Crim Library UTL (@CrimLib) July 22, 2015

This lawsuit claims Canada has been abusing mentally ill prisoners.  https://t.co/AsQKtRKkbv via @vicenews

— Crim Library UTL (@CrimLib) July 24, 2015

Office of the Correctional Investigator: Administrative Segregation in Federal Corrections. 10 Year Trends
"Between March 31, 2005 and March 31, 2015 the overall CSC incarcerated population increased by 13.6% (from 12,623 to 14,335). During the same period women increased 77.4% (from 368 to 653), men 11.6% (from 12,255 to 13,682), Aboriginal offenders 52.4% (from 2,296 to 3,500), non-Aboriginal offenders 4.9% (from 10,327 to 10,835), Black offenders 77.5% (from 792 to 1,406) while Caucasian offenders decreased -6.1% (from 8,815 to 8,281). The Caucasian group is the only group showing a steadily declining population.

The number of admissions to segregation has grown at a slower rate than for the equivalent CSC incarcerated population of Federally Sentenced Women (FSW), male, Aboriginal, non-Aboriginal and Caucasian inmates. However, Black segregation admissions have grown at a faster rate than the incarcerated population of Black offenders."

The mental and physical effects of solitary confinement http://t.co/gvo8fH5Wxw via @mprnews
— Oxford Criminology (@OxfordCrim) April 17, 2015

Kelly Hannah-Moffat: The Problem with Solitary Confinement
"It’s a practice that has been in the news since the Ashley Smith case first made headlines and, last week, the Ontario government announced it had launched a review of its solitary confinement policies.

Kelly Hannah-Moffat is an expert on prisons, risk assessment and punishment, particularly as experienced by women and marginalized populations. A professor of sociology at the University of Toronto Mississauga and director of the Centre of Criminology & Sociolegal Studies, she spoke with writer Jenny Hall about the practice – what is it, what is it supposed to accomplish, and how is it being used?"

A Solitary Failure: The Waste, Cost and Harm of Solitary Confinement - ACLU Report

Report Summary:

• Background - Explore the the early failure of solitary confinement, the misguided return of solitary confinement int he late 20th century, and the renewed consensus: solitary is a dangerous and expensive correctional practice.
• Solitary Confinement increases crime - Solitary permanently damages people who will one day return to Texas communities. The consequences of overusing solitary is more crime in Texas communities.
• Solitary is a huge cost to taxpayers - Solitary confinement costs Texas taxpayers at leas $46 Million a year.
• Overuse of solitary increases prison violence – Solitary confinement makes prison less safe and deprives officers of the option to incentivize good behavior. Violence escalates when officers deny people in solitary basic needs. Other states have improved prison safety by reducing solitary confinement.
• Mentally ill people deteriorate - The universal consensus: never place the seriously mentally ill in solitary. Yet, Texas sends thousands of people with mental illnesses to solitary confinement and inadequately monitors and treats them.

View the Full Report

Special Volume of Canadian Journal of Human Rights (v.4, no.1) on Solitary Confinement is out.  

Open access at cjhr.ca

A. Table of Contents

B. Title Page & Publication Information

1. Debra Parkes Introduction (English)

2. Debra Parkes Introduction (Francais)

3. Justin Piché and Karine Major—Prisoner Writing in/on Solitary Confinement: Contributions from the Journal of Prisoners on Prisons, 1988-2013

4. Lisa Guenther—Political Action at the End of the World: Hannah Arendt and the California Prison Hunger Strikes

5. Michael Jackson—Reflections on 40 Years of Advocacy

6. Lisa Coleen Kerr—The Origins of Unlawful Prison Policies 

7. Efrat Arbel—Contesting Unmodulated Deprivation: Sauvé v Canada and the Normative Limits on Punishment

8. Sharon Shalev—Solitary Confinement: The View from Europe

9. David C Fathi—United States: Turning the Corner on Solitary Confinement?

The Psychology of Cruelty: Recognizing Grave Mental Harm in American Prisons
"Over the past forty years, American prisons have increasingly relied on a brutal method of confinement that inflicts sever suffering on prisoners.  Inmates confined in this manner have endured symptoms ranging from hallucinations and perceptual distortions to self-mutilation and suicidal ideation.  Walking past these inmates, one can observe babbling, shrieking, and the banging of prisoners' bodies against the walls of their cells.  There is no dispute that this method of confinement has a terrible effect on prisoners' well-being, and yet because it inflicts mental harm, rather than physical harm, courts have largely turned a blind eye.

Solitary confinement - the confinement of a prisoner in isolation with limited chance for social interaction or environmental stimulus - has existed in America for centuries, but until the late twentieth century, it was rarely used.  In the 1970s and 1980s, the use of solitary confinement began to expand, as prisons started to employ it not only for discipline and safety, but also, in America's supermax prisons, as a method of long-term imprisonment.  Supermax prisons - prisons that house inmates in perpetual conditions of solitary confinement - have continued to spread across the country since the first one opened in 1983.  Today, about forty states have at least one supermax prison, and nearly sixty total facilities are in operation around the country.  Though estimates vary, most conclude that about 25,000 inmates are currently incarcerated in supermax facilities, with another 55,000 in solitary confinement outside the supermax setting."