August 10 is a day set aside to remember all the men and women who have died unnatural deaths in Canadian prisons.   One such woman was Ashley Smith[1] who died by self-inflicted strangulation on October 19, 2007 while incarcerated at Grand Valley Institution for Women.  From her early teenage years Ashley had frequent run-ins with the criminal justice system, mostly for minor offences and ended up in youth custody and eventually the Grand Valley Institution for Women.  She died there at the age of 19.

Following a lengthy inquest into her death, a coroner’s jury returned a verdict of homicide and provided 104 recommendations to the coroner which included recommendations on how the Correctional Service of Canada could better serve female inmates and inmates suffering from mental illness.[2]

What is clear from the publicity surrounding the inquest and the jury’s findings is that prisons are poorly equipped to deal with mental health issues.  In his annual report for 2013-2014, the Office of the Correctional Investigator was critical of the Correctional Service of Canada for failing to follow up on the jury’s recommendations to the coroner and his own recommendations for dealing with the growing number of incidents of self-injury among federally sentenced women offenders.[3]

In the same report, the Correctional Investigator notes that a large percentage of the women in the federal correctional system experience symptoms consistent with a diagnosis of a psychiatric disorder and eight in ten women have a history of substance or alcohol abuse.  His most troubling finding is that the number of self-injury incidents among federally sentenced women is increasing at an alarming rate noting that in 2013-2014 there were 559 incidents of self-injury among women offenders, a 40% increase from the previous year. He stressed the importance of moving these women to outside treatment centres.[4]

The Correctional Investigator’s concerns are echoed in a newsletter published by the Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund in 2014.[5]  The newsletter notes the failure of the corrections system and provincial health care in providing women such as Ashley Smith with appropriate care and goes further to consider the issues related to the situation of women in prisons:

Women in detention are an extremely marginalized group who are often in prison as a result of larger systemic reasons.  While the jury recommendations are welcome, the root causes of women’s detention such as poverty, racism, colonialism, and violence – fundamental issues affecting women’s equality that start outside prison walls- must be addressed in order to prevent women being incarcerated in the first place.

As the October 2015 Federal election approaches ask your candidates what they would do to prevent other deaths like Ashley Smith’s before another woman dies in prison from a self-inflicted injury.  And this Prisoner Justice Day, take a moment to reflect on the short and troubled life of Ashley Smith and her avoidable death in prison.

[1] Born January 29, 1988 and died October 19, 2007

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashley_Smith_inquest

[3] Annual Report 2013-2014 of the Office of the Correctional Investigator, pp. 30 -31

[4] Ibid, p.45

[5] http://www.leaf.ca/seeking-accountability-by-the-correctional-service-of-canada-csc-for-its-treatment-of-women-with-mental-health-concerns/