“A Global News investigation revealed that Canada’s “psychiatric prisons,” home to the penal system’s sickest, most vulnerable inmates, have the highest death and assault rates of any federal prisons. Designed, theoretically, to provide special care for Canada’s growing population of inmates with severe mental illness, these prisons have become little more than warehouses for extremely ill offenders: They’re kept in solitary confinement despite overwhelming evidence against it, and, Global News discovered, even so-called “intensive psychiatric care” is little more than segregation by any other name. After refusing to speak with us about this for months, Canada’s Public Safety Minister announced a pilot project for two women inmates with mental illness in a groundbreaking facility specially designed for their care and rehabilitation. Global News also reported that, six months later, that pilot project had yet to materialize.”
