Acoby held guard hostage at Truro’s Nova Institution in 2007 Canada’s first female dangerous offender granted day parole

The first woman in Canada to be designated a dangerous offender has been given day parole.

Renee Jeanette Acoby, 39, has been involved in a number of hostage-takings involving guards, inmates and staff at federal prisons across Canada, including one at the Nova Institution for Women in Truro 11 years ago.

Documents recently released show that on April 18 the Parole Board of Canada granted Acoby, who has a teenage daughter, two months of day parole because “you have made considerable progress since you were last reviewed for day parole in 2015.”

“You have completed programming with gains; you have cascaded to medium security, and maintained your behaviour there with no significant management interventions.”

Acoby also has participated in escorted temporary leaves from the Edmonton Institution for Women with no concerns.

But the parole board concluded there would be “undue risk” in granting Acoby’s request for full parole because “you have no full parole release plan for the Board to consider, and you have not demonstrated a period of compliance and stability on an expanded form of release.”

Acoby was the first woman to be declared a dangerous offender in 2011.

Corrections Canada could not confirm the current number of female dangerous offenders in Canada on Tuesday but media reports have put the number at nine.

In August 2007, while being escorted to a shower by three guards at the Nova Institution, Acoby grabbed one of the officers and held a metal screw from a CD player to her throat. According to her parole file, she ordered the two other officers to leave and forced the first officer to her knees, handcuffed her and tied her feet together with boot laces.

“You removed the officer’s belt and tied it around her neck,” the parole board decision said.

“You demanded cigarettes and a pop, a call to the president of the Elizabeth Fry Society and a transfer to another institution. You held the victim for approximately two hours before you agreed to free her in exchange for a cigarette.”

According to the parole board documents, Acoby was raised for the first 10 years of her life by her grandmother, who until then she thought was her mother.

At age 10 Acoby found out that her father had actually murdered her biological mother. After that devastating revelation her life began spiralling out of control and she started using drugs, alcohol and solvents, and associated with negative peers.