Watchdog seeks talks on prison deaths
In 2009 and again in 2010, federal corrections officials convened twoday meetings with Canada’s chief coroners and medical examiners to discuss deaths in custody and ways to prevent them. But for unexplained reasons, those annual meetings stopped.
In the wake of a Postmedia News investigation into the patchwork system of death inquests and inquiries, Canada’s correctional watchdog is calling for the resumption of these meetings, as well as the formation of a national advisory body to help identify trends and suggest further research into deaths in prisons.
Howard Sapers told Postmedia News that all too often the correctional service will adopt recommendations stemming from its own internal investigations or from coroners’ inquests but those changes will fail to “take root” system-wide.
“This episodic response to deaths in custody has to stop,” Sapers said. “There has to be more corporate commitment to make lasting change based on lessons learned.”
One of the themes that emerged from Postmedia’s investigation was that inquest outcomes tend to be viewed in isolation, meaning there are few attempts to identify patterns or trends or to share lessons across provinces.
Jurors at the high-profile inquest into the death of Ashley Smith, the young woman who strangled herself in front of prison guards, keyed in on this problem last month in their verdict, recommending that their dozens of recommendations for improving the handling of female inmates with mental illness be distributed to all prisons and that Smith’s death become a case study for all corrections managers and staff.
Sara Parkes, a spokeswoman for the correctional service, said in an email that the agency “anticipates hosting future meetings with coroners’ offices and medical examiners on an annual basis to continue to enhance its practices in preventing future incidents.”
She did not offer an explanation as to why the meetings had stopped.
According to minutes from the 2009 and 2010 meetings, officials discussed setting up guidelines for the exchange of information. For instance, coroners would provide to the correctional service copies of autopsy reports, while the correctional service would provide coroners their internal investigation reports.
A consensus was also reached that Ottawa and the provinces would collaborate to “determine contributing factors for deaths in custody and why they are increasing (i.e. aging population, gangs, mental illness, drugs).”
Parkes said the agency is still “working to create guidelines” for sharing information. She noted the service has convened two review committees in recent years consisting of academics and senior provincial officials to assess the agency’s response to deaths in custody.
But Sapers said this still doesn’t go far enough. His most recent annual report called for the formation of a “ministerial-level panel or parliamentary committee” to look into deaths in prisons. According to his office, between 2001-02 and 2010-11, 530 offenders died in federal custody — 5.5 per cent were homicides and 17.4 per cent were suicides.