Harper’s policies are failing prisoners with mental illness

OTTAWA –Today’s report from Correctional Investigator Howard Sapers paints a troubling picture of how the Conservative government’s approach to prisons is failing inmates with mental illness, endangering staff while doing nothing to make Canadians safer, according to New Democrat Public Safety Critic Don Davies (Vancouver Kingsway).

“This should finally be a wake-up call to the government,” said Davies. “Mr. Sapers is very clear that our prison system is ill-equipped to handle mental illness. These shortfalls have led to inmate deaths and create difficult and dangerous working conditions for prison staff.”

Mr. Sapers’ report examined nine deaths in federal custody and revealed six serious deficiencies in the way the Correctional Service of Canada deals with mentally-ill and suicidal inmates. The report recommends several key changes, including an end to the practice of putting suicidal or mentally-ill prisoners in long-term segregation and the provision of 24 hour medical care in all maximum and medium security facilities.

“Instead of treating them, mentally-ill inmates are too often simply warehoused or segregated. This fails to treat the underlying causes of the problem behaviour and does nothing to improve public safety,” said Davies. “There have been too many tragic cases already where this approach has led to inmate deaths.”

In his report Mr. Sapers points out that these recommendations have been made before, but have been ignored by the Conservative government.

“Two weeks ago I toured the Regional Psychiatric Centre in Saskatoon where Ashley Smith spent time in segregation. I spoke to correctional staff who had dealt with her,” said Davies. “Although mentally-ill inmates present great challenges to the correctional system, what is clear is that we need to provide more resources to our correctional staff and not simply burden them with more inmates.

"That should be Ashley Smith's legacy."