Province will not commit to 15-day limit on solitary
Researchers, courts in other provinces want cap on ‘administrative segregation’
SASKATOON Cody Francis spent a combined total of nine months in “the hole,” the last stint being his longest.
In the summer of 2011, Francis spent four months in administrative solitary confinement at the provincial jail in Regina — 23 hours a day in his cell.
He lost track of time, he says. He couldn’t keep his belongings with him, and couldn’t see his own reflection during the day because there was no mirror over the toilet, unlike in general population cells.
“It was probably the worst f--ing four months of my entire life. It was pretty horrible,” the 31-yearold said.
Administrative segregation is used in a provincial jail when the administration believes an inmate poses a danger to himself, others, the security of the facility, the public or an investigation. It’s different from a disciplinary segregation and is not meant to be punitive.
The cap for disciplinary segregation is 10 days. However, there is no legislated cap on how long an inmate can be held on administrative segregation.
Saskatchewan’s policy on administrative segregation says inmates are to be “removed from this status at the earliest appropriate time.” Researchers and the superior provincial courts in British Columbia and Ontario have recommended the maximum administrative segregation should be 15 days.
Saskatchewan inmates have been held much longer than that.
In response to an access to information request, the Ministry of Corrections and Policing provided a one-day snapshot of inmates in administrative segregation on March 21, 2018. On that day, 68 of the province’s 1,730 inmates (roughly four per cent) were in administrative segregation. The majority had been there more than 15 days; 21 inmates — 30 per cent — had been held more than 30 days, while 16 had been held between 16 and 30 days.
Thirty-two of the inmates in administrative solitary confinement that day were at the Regina Correctional Centre. Twenty-three were at the Saskatoon Correctional Centre, seven were at the Prince Albert Correctional Centre and six were at Pine Grove, the provincial women’s jail.
The ministry said in the emailed statement that it was not able to say how many inmates had been placed on administrative segregation in 2018 or how long inmates were on administrative segregation that year.
The statement said as of Oct. 1, only three of the 1,981 inmates in Saskatchewan’s jails — 0.2 per cent — were in administrative segregation.
That was down substantially from the four per cent of inmates on administrative segregation on March 21, 2018, the oneday snapshot provided to the Starphoenix.
The ministry added that, between May and September, the average length of stay on administrative segregation was seven days.
A spokesperson said the ministry is taking measures to reduce the number of inmates placed in segregation and has instituted a review process to assess inmates on a daily, weekly and bi-weekly basis. A jail’s manager has to be certain there’s no reasonable alternative, the ministry has developed a tool to assess alternatives and staff have established a tracking system to monitor all administrative segregation holds, according to the ministry’s statement.
The ministry would not commit to adopting a 15-day cap on administrative segregation holds.
When Francis spent four months on administrative segregation, he was serving a sentence of two years less a day — from March 2010 to February 2012 — for a variety of offences including robbery, vehicle theft and drug charges.
He said he was moved into administrative segregation because corrections staff got word of planned gang activity at the jail and he was a key player in a gang.
He now says he is no longer a gang member.
Last year, B.C.’S Superior Court found federal solitary confinement laws that allow prolonged, indeterminate use of solitary confinement unconstitutional, following a challenge by the John Howard Society of Canada and the B.C. Civil Liberties Association. The B.C. Court of Appeals upheld that decision this year.
Earlier this year, the Ontario Superior Court imposed a 15-day cap on administrative solitary confinement at federal penitentiaries in that province.
The court found that solitary confinement of an inmate for more than 15 days does not “survive constitutional scrutiny.”
The federal government has since passed Bill C-38, which abolishes solitary confinement in prisons (where inmates serve sentences of greater than two years) and replaces it with a “structured intervention model” that aims to remove physical barriers — such as security doors — to ensure inmates have human contact.
Shawn Fraser, CEO of the John Howard Society of Saskatchewan, said he feels it’s only a matter of time before there’s a court ruling that applies to Saskatchewan’s jails.
He said the lengths of time people are spending on administrative solitary confinement appear to have been declining since the B.C. ruling in 2018.
A spokesperson for the provincial Corrections Ministry said it began its review of administrative solitary confinement in 2014, before the court rulings.
Fraser said the province needs a corrections system with enough flexibility to deal with the issues that lead to solitary confinement without putting people there. He noted the jails are so full that there’s no “wiggle room” to shuffle inmates if needed, such as moving them to unoccupied general population cells if they are in danger of being harmed by others.
“The punishment for committing a crime is the loss of your freedom, not the loss of your sanity,” he said, adding that solitary confinement has long-lasting psychological effects, which also affect how things run in the facility, making work more difficult for guards as well.
While administrative segregation is described as a last resort, Nicholas Blenkinsop, supervising lawyer at Community Legal Assistance Services for Saskatoon Inner City Inc., said he sees it used often in situations where the system doesn’t know what to do with inmates.
“I’m not sure that’s appropriate and I don’t think that it meets the definition. I think that that’s problematic,” he said, adding that he’s concerned about people staying in segregation longer than they should.
Francis said he felt “borderline insane” after he got out of solitary confinement at the end of his final stay.
“I got really bad anti-social behaviours from that. I remember when they finally took me out of the hole and put me in general population, it took me a very long time to warm up to people, to try to talk to people.
“I remember it being a very, very unpleasant experience, that’s for sure.”