|
Teen's death sparks prison furor
Guards, supervisor face criminal charges
November 21, 2007
By Peter Cheney
By the time she was in her early
teens, it was clear that the relationship between Ashley Smith and
authority would be a rocky one.
Growing up in Moncton, she was
busted for throwing crab apples at a postal worker. Her odyssey
through the Canadian prison system began in 2003, when she was just
15 years old - a judge handed down a six-year sentence for a
grab-bag of accumulated criminal offences that included uttering
threats, assault with a weapon, assaulting a peace officer, and
possession of a prohibited weapon.
Her parents tried to make the best
of it, hoping that some jail time might finally straighten out their
unruly daughter: "We were encouraged to let the professionals take
over," they said in a statement.
But the six years turned into a
death sentence. On the morning of Oct. 19, Ms. Smith was found dead
in her cell at the Grand Valley Institution, a federal women's
prison located in Kitchener. She was 19. An autopsy determined that
she had died of asphyxiation.
Ms. Smith's death has sparked an
institutional firestorm. Three guards and a supervisor are facing
criminal charges. Five other prison staff, including a supervisor,
have been suspended without pay. Three official investigations are
already under way, and there is pressure for a fourth. Public Safety
Minister Stockwell Day has promised that "appropriate action will be
taken" after the investigations are complete.
Ms. Smith's parents, meanwhile,
have adopted a flinty-eyed perspective on the justice system that
they hoped would rehabilitate their daughter: "They took us away
from her at 15," they said this week. "They returned her to us at 19
in a body bag."
At the time of her death, Ms. Smith
was on suicide watch, which called for her to be under constant
surveillance, both by prison guards and by a set of video cameras.
Her psychological breakdown was not a surprise: For nearly two
years, Ms. Smith had been confined to segregation cells, where she
lived alone, in conditions that appalled the few outsiders who knew
about them.
"Her human rights and her Charter
rights were violated," said Kim Pate, Executive Director of the
Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies. "She was being
treated in ways that were inhumane."
Ms. Smith spent time in several
institutions. One of them was in Saskatchewan; a male guard there
was later charged with assaulting her. Ms. Pate visited Ms. Smith
several times, and complained to prison officials, apparently to no
avail. The last visit was on Sept. 24, when Ms. Pate saw Ms. Smith
in a bare concrete cell at Grand Valley. Ms. Smith had no shoes, and
her only clothing was a security gown, a prison garment that looked
like a horse blanket. Ms. Smith's mattress had been taken away,
forcing her to sleep on a concrete slab. There was no blanket.
In Ms. Pate's view, Ms. Smith was
spiralling downward, trapped in a cycle of self-defeating rage
against the institution, which reacted with punishments and
deprivations.
"She was cold, and she was quite
distressed," Ms. Pate said. "She had been that way for several days
when I saw her. Anyone being treated in that way, if they did not
have mental-health issues, certainly would have developed them."
The prison where Ms. Smith died is
one of seven new federal institutions that have opened over the past
decade to replace Kingston's infamous Prison For Women, known as
P4W, which was harshly criticized by Madame Justice Louise Arbour in
a 1996 report.
Grand Valley houses 138 inmates.
Most live in minimum- or medium-security conditions, in "cottage"
units where women interact every day, and have access to cooking and
laundry facilities. Ms. Smith, however, had spent the past two years
in isolation after a series of run-ins with guards and prison
administrators. Despite the millions spent on upgraded prisons, Ms.
Smith found herself in an environment not that much different than
the one at P4W, surrounded by concrete, bulletproof glass, and bars.
Ms. Pate believes Ms. Smith's death
should serve as a wake-up call. "This was one of the more troubling
cases we have ever dealt with. It was troubling to us before Ashley
died. We need to be looking at the conditions of confinement of
other women in the prison system, and of other men in the prison
system."
Her concerns are shared by Karen
Redman, the Liberal MP for Kitchener Centre, who is pressing for a
federal inquiry. "Clearly, there are more questions than answers,"
Ms. Redman said. "There needs to be an objective accounting to
Canadians about what happened."
|
