24-hour limit urged for youths held in solitary
Provincial advocate notes some are being kept in ‘dehumanizing conditions’ for up to 14 days
The province should ban jails from keeping youths in solitary confinement for more than 24 hours, a new report urges.
The report from the provincial advocate for children and youths also calls for independent monitoring of the use of solitary confinement, asking the advocate be notified whenever a youth is held longer than 24 hours or whenever mental health issues are involved.
In 2013, there were two cases where youths between the ages of 16 and 18 were kept in isolation for between 15 and 16 days. In 2014, there were two cases that lasted about 10 days.
Although the number of youths kept in solitary confinement is declining, 23 per cent were kept in solitary confinement for more than 24 hours in 2014 (a decrease from around 33 per cent in 2009), the report found.
Researchers interviewed 141 young people who had experienced solitary confinement, describing “dehumanizing conditions” including fluctuating temperatures in their cells, waiting hours for toilet paper or for the toilet to be flushed from the outside, and little access to fresh air, books or any kind of mental stimulation.
About half of the youths interviewed said that they were denied their right to speak to a lawyer or the advocate, and 70 per cent said they were only told why they were isolated after being released.
“If a parent did what they did and said, ‘For your own good we are going to keep you in this cell, in these conditions for 23 out of 24 hours for 15 days.’ If a parent did that, we’d be apprehending that child,” provincial advocate Irwin Elman said. “It’s unacceptable for the province.” Premier Kathleen Wynne said her government is “absolutely” ready to look at issues raised in the child advocate’s report.
“The advocate has done his job and has shone a light on some issues that, of course, we are concerned about and that we will need to work with him to rectify,” she told reporters while visiting Toronto East General Hospital on Wednesday.
In a statement, Minister of Children and Youth Services Tracy MacCharles said a thorough review of the report and recommendations will be done.
“I’m pleased the Advocate’s report recognizes that, across the province, there is a downward trend in the use of secure isolation in youth justice facilities,” the statement said. “He has also confirmed that secure isolation in youth justice facilities is being used in accordance with provincial legislation and policy — used only when the physical safety of the offending youth, the other youth in the facility or staff is compromised and not as a means of punishment.”
However, in an interview, Elman disagreed with the statement’s characterization of the report; he questioned why, if the intent of the isolation is crisis management and not punishment, the youths are being put into concrete cells with food slots in the door.
In most cases, the brief description of why solitary confinement was ordered appeared to meet the legislated criteria in the Child and Family Services Act for risk of serious harm to others or property, the report found.
However, some descriptions suggested “serious mental heath concerns,” including one instance where a youth was placed in solitary for aggressive behaviour, and threatening and attempting suicide, after returning from an involuntary committal to a mental heath ward.
The data was unavailable to show how many of the youth placed in solitary confinement have mental heath issues. It also does not show whether individuals were repeatedly placed in solitary, or break the data down by race or gender.
But Elman says that the research shows youth who are already experiencing difficulties, trauma or mental health issues are particularly susceptible to the impacts of solitary confinement — and that the more trauma a youth is dealing with, the more likely they are to end up in isolation.
He believes that a lack of resources at these facilities to treat youth with mental heath issues does result in some being placed in solitary confinement instead of getting the help they need.
“I believe that in certain instances . . . something happens and the staff and the facility doesn’t have a better alternative,” Elman said. “I think that there is so much work to be done around how we support youth.”
The dangers of solitary confinement, particularly in cases involving mental illness, are well known, says Breese Davies, one of the lawyers involved in the Ashley Smith inquest, which resulted in recommendations to limit the use of segregation in the prison system. Smith was kept in segregation for months before she asphyxiated herself in 2007 at the age of 19.
The UN Special Rapporteur on torture has found that youth face particular harm from solitary confinement and that any duration of the practice constitutes “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.”
“It’s counterproductive to their (mental) illness to hold someone in segregation, it can increase their anxiety, depression and feeling of hopelessness that come with having all of what you know taken away from you and being isolated,” said Davies. “Young people are also particularly vulnerable. They are at a different developmental stage, have different coping mechanisms . . . Being held in segregation particularly if you don’t know how long you are going to be there is a very, very distressing scenario.”
The report also found an increase in solitary confinement being used on youth between the ages of 13 and 16 from106 instances in 2013 to186 in 2014. Youth under the age of 16 can only be held in isolation for eight out of 24 hours, or maximum 24 hours in a week.
“This is the most egregious deprivation of liberty we use, and it is being used on children as young as 13 years old,” says lawyer Mary Birdsell, the executive director at Justice for Children and Youth. “We know this is a dangerous place for people to be, we just need to put a stop to it.”
“We know this is a dangerous place for people to be, we just need to put a stop to it.” MARY BIRDSELL CHILD RIGHTS ADVOCATE