The end of solitary: Good riddance to state cruelty

Some people, many of us, in fact, have trouble differentiating between revenge and justice.

To those people, news that the federal government is moving to end the use of solitary confinement, the practice of isolating inmates for 22 or more hours a day, may seem wrong-headed, or even outrageous. Why would the government want to “give a break,” or to make prison time any easier in any way, for convicted criminals, many of whom have committed terrible crimes?

The Conservative opposition, always game for partisan hyperbole, says this shows that the government puts the welfare of criminals above crime victims. There’s no sensible response to that ludicrous claim.

Solitary confinement is bad prison practice. It’s also cruel and inhumane, but let’s deal with the former first.

Calls for an end to solitary have been echoing for years. They got a lot louder with the high-profile inquest into the death of Ashley Smith, who killed herself in a segregated prison cell at the Grand Valley Institution for Women in Kitchener in 2007. Under growing public pressure, and mounting legal challenges, the government in 2013 vowed to change the rules.

The new rules, Bill C-83, eliminate two types of solitary confinement most used in federal prisons: disciplinary segregation and administrative segregation. They will be replaced with specialized units that would provide designated inmates with at least four hours a day outside their cells, including two hours of human interaction.

The new units would house inmates who pose a safety risk or might interfere with an ongoing investigation. In these cells, inmates would receive health interventions, programming and mental health support, typically not available to inmates in solitary confinement.

Much of what is in Bill C-83 is drawn from the 104 recommendations in the Ashley Smith inquest, which ultimately found that her death should be considered a homicide. Inmates in the new units will also be visited daily by a registered health-care professional and be provided with access to patient advocates.

Why? Why do all this when crime victims rarely are afforded the same rights and recognition? Two reasons.

Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale explains one this way: “Remember that the vast majority of these inmates will at some point serve their sentence and be released into society. So the key question is, are they going to be released in a condition where they have some prospect of leading a law abiding life? Or are you just going to leave them in a condition where they will undoubtedly reoffend again and there will be more victims and there will be less safe communities?”

The second reason: Because traditional solitary confinement — human isolation for 22 hours a day in a room the size of two queen-sized mattresses — is cruel, uncivilized and toxic. Yes, many of these inmates have done terrible things, and didn’t have the consideration for their victims that the state is showing them with these overdue reforms.

That’s not the point. Even if you don’t believe in rehabilitation, we have a responsibility to try, and in doing so minimize the chances of recidivism and optimize community safety.

In any case, state-sponsored cruelty is something Canadians should reject. We’re better than that.

“State-sponsored cruelty is something Canadians should reject. We’re better than that.”