SEGREGATION RATE TOO HIGH

In the name of safety and security, Saskatchewan Justice officials have doubled down on the use of prisoner segregation over the past 15 years to a level that far exceeds the 15-day maximum beyond which the United Nations deems the practice to constitute torture.

In response to a freedom of information request from Saskatoon StarPhoenix writer Thia James, the ministry reported that the Saskatoon Correctional Centre placed 158 prisoners in solitary confinement for an average of 37 days over a three-month period ending Nov. 30, 2014, while at the Regina jail, the three-month average involving 127 inmates in solitary for the period ending March 31, 2015, was a whopping 46.7 days.

Things were only fractionally better at the Prince Albert Correctional Centre, where 113 prisoners spent an average of 46.6 days mostly deprived of human contact over the period studied, while at the Pine Grove facility that houses women, 60 inmates were isolated from the general population for 3.5 days on average.

Among 104 recommendations in 2012 from a jury in the coroner’s inquiry into the deplorable death in custody of federal inmate Ashley Smith was a call to place a strict limit of 15 consecutive days that a prisoner can be placed in solitary confinement, and a maximum of 60 days in a calendar year. Ms. Smith had been shuffled through 17 corrections facilities in four provinces in her final year and had been placed in segregation for much of that time.

While the Correctional Service of Canada announced in December that it has reduced by 50 per cent its use of solitary confinement in the wake of widespread criticism and the Smith jury recommendations, apparently the message is slow to filter through Saskatchewan’s justice system.

“We’ve looked at the Ashley Smith recommendations in terms of how they may apply to the provincial system,” Justice spokesman Drew Wilby told the SP. “And as we continue to review our procedures, our policies and our processes ... we will definitely consider that going forward.”

The fact that the latest numbers represent more than a doubling of the average 17.5 days in nonpunitive segregation in Saskatoon reported by the provincial ombudsman in 2002, almost a quadrupling of the 12-day Regina average 15 years ago and more than a seven-fold increase at the P.A. jail points to a serious problem.

Medical experts note that prisoners placed in segregation for long periods have proven less successful in reintegrating into society, and that the isolation has long-term impacts such as memory impairment, confusion, depression and personality change.

Mr. Wilby denies that administrative segregation has become a tool for managing prison overcrowding, but one needs to question Saskatchewan’s extensive use of a measure that in the long run likely makes prisons and society both less secure.