Get self-harming women out of prison: watchdog

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The death of 19 year-old Ashley Smith in 2007 and other cases have sparked an investigation of women in prison who chronically harm themselves. In Canada, the Correctional Investigator acts as an ombudsman for inmates in federal penitentiaries.

Since Smith’s death, the number of self-injury incidents has more than tripled to 901, according to the current investigator, Howard Sapers. He reviewed records, files and reports and visited three women’s detention centres to assess how the Correctional Service of Canada responds to women who self-harm.

“The system is not coping well”

“This is a very marginalized, vulnerable and ill population of women who are serving a federal sentence,” Sapers said of the women he studied. “They are not coping well and the system is not coping well with them either.”

Of the eight most extreme cases, eight were aboriginal. All had been victims of physical or sexual abuse. Most spent their childhood in foster care. All were previously diagnosed with a significant mental disorder, four of them with fetal alcohol syndrome.

Use of force increased self-harming

The eight women were involved in hundreds of self-harm incidents, most of which resulted in a use of force response from correctional authorities. Sapers noted that often stopped the immediate incident of self-harm with but made matters worse subsequently.

“What our investigation revealed is that there is often an escalation in the self-harming behaviour the more there is a security focused response,” said Sapers. “Many, many of these women ended up being put into isolation or segregation and a disproportionate number of self-harm incidents take place in those segregation cells.

“Many of these women are placed in restraints. Many of these women are strip-searched involuntarily as part of their movement from their cell to an isolation or segregation cell.”

Outside treatment needed: Sapers

These most chronic and complex cases of self-injury should be transferred to external psychiatric facilities, recommends Sapers. He notes that complex medical cases such as heart attack patients are treated outside penitentiaries and so should inmates suffering from complex psychological problems.

Correctional staff should receive enhanced training, says Sapers. There should be a prohibition on placing self-harming offenders in prolonged seclusion and there needs to be strengthened monitoring and reporting on the use of physical restraints for these inmates. These and several other recommendations will be made to the government and Sapers hope they will lead to major changes in the way self-harming inmates are handled in federal correctional institutions.