04 March 2009
Prison Deaths Result from Inadequate Treatment of Mentally Ill Inmates
By Maria E. Molina
Impunity Watch Reporter, North America
OTTAWA, Canada – The Correctional Service of Canada broke its own regulations by holding a troubled inmate in solitary confinement for most of the year she spent in federal prisons before she killed herself.
In a critical report, Correctional Investigator Howard Sapers detailed how repeated bureaucratic failures contributed to the death of a teen who choked herself in her cell in 2007. Guards confused about response policy waited about 25 minutes to call for medical help after they noticed she was choking. They did not immediately check the teen’s vital signs or offer first aid after finally cutting the material from her neck.
The story is one that continues a disturbing and a well-documented pattern of deaths in custody which are the result of under-resources and disjointed correctional and mental-health-care system. The torment of mentally ill inmates who only get sicker behind bars is a growing problem that a buckling corrections system can’t handle.
The correctional service is assessing patients earlier, directing more resources to treatment and training staff better, but many of those changes are new, and it is unclear how well they’re working. Prisons need to work federal and provincial health and justice and corrections officials to come up with a national strategy.
The health system’s failure to cope with the mentally ill has led to many ending up in jail.
Activists have argued that it is harder for mentally ill individuals who are sent to jails to get into the treatment facilities they really need, and that what is really needed are programs to ensure mentally ill people who break the law are diverted to treatment, rather than prisons. Correctional facilities are not the facilities to deliver mental-health care. The government needs to ensure the mentally ill don’t get into those facilities in the first place.
For more information, please see:
National Post – System-wide failures led to Ontario teen’s prison suicide: report – 3 March 2009
The Canadian Press – Teen’s prison death ‘entirely preventable’: watchdog – 3 March 2009
The Globe and Mail – Instructed to curtail crushing red tape, guards watched girl die in her cell – 3 March 2009
The Globe and Mail – Systemic failures led to teen’s prison death: report – 3 March 2009
