To Marie-France Lalonde, MPP, Minister of Community Safety, Ontario

Marie-France Lalonde, MPP
Minister of Community Safety and Correctional Services

Dear Ms Lalonde

We were pleased when the premier appointed Howard Sapers to conduct a long-needed inquiry into the use of solitary confinement in Ontario prisons. We consider that Mr Sapers’s 63 recommendations go far in addressing the worst aspects of solitary confinement as currently practised (notably the ban on its use for juveniles, pregnant women and the mentally ill). We concur that independent oversight would be better than the wide-open discretion prison authorities currently have in imposing, and continuing, solitary confinement.

However, we believe the time has come to go further: to abolish the use of solitary as a barbaric relic of a previous time. It was originally instituted on the theory that it would promote self-reflection and reform. Instead, it made inmates mad. It continues to, and to provoke self-harm, attempted suicide and suicide.

For “disciplinary segregation” the case is obvious: abolition. Criminal penalties for serious infractions in a penal institution are available, or loss of privileges for the less serious.

“Administrative segregation” is more complicated. For inmates on remand there is no justification for the punitive aspects, the extreme deprivation, of segregation. Some kind of protective custody, with measures to ensure social contact and exercise must be provided. Protective custody for vulnerable inmates will also require creative measures to ensure adequate social contact for health. Segregation should not be used for those who self-harm or attempt or threaten suicide, matters for psychiatric care.

(B) segregation to protect staff and other inmates from harm: again abolition will require significant changes in building, staffing and programs. There are positive examples in other places that should be considered. We urge Ontario to be bold in looking at alternatives.

Reforms such as independent oversight do not go far enough. Independent oversight for slavery? Flogging? Fewer strokes of the paddle? We say the time has come, as it did for those barbaric practices, to abolish solitary confinement, under whatever name.

Sincerely yours

Mary Boyce, lawyer
Paul Copeland, CM, LLB
Canon Phyllis Creighton, OOnt, MA, editor
Hon Norman Dyson, QC
Ronald Hinch, PhD, professor emeritus of criminology
Hon Keith Hoilett
Lynn McDonald, CM, PhD, LLD (hon) professor emerita