Statement responding to the NL Corrections & Community Services: Deaths in Custody Review

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St. John’s, NL – The St. John’s Status of Women Council supports the findings of the recent Newfoundland and Labrador Corrections and Community Services: Deaths in Custody Review report, including the 17 recommendations therein. We also express our deepest and sincere condolences to the families and loved ones of those who have died in Newfoundland and Labrador’s prisons. We continue to send our support to the women currently incarcerated across our province, and the staff within these institutions.

As a frontline women’s serving organization supporting women before, throughout, and after their experiences with the criminal justice system in our province, we are deeply concerned for the well-being, safety, and human rights of women who are incarcerated in our prisons. We know that most incarcerated women are women living below the poverty line, women dealing with homelessness and unstable, unsafe housing, women who are Indigenous, women who have untreated mental health and addictions, and women who have experienced sexual and physical violence. We have come to see the impacts of our province sending some of our most marginalized women to chronically overcrowded and under-resourced prisons.

Women are being incarcerated at alarming rates. In Newfoundland and Labrador between 2008-2016, the number of incarcerated women has increased by 64 per cent. Indigenous women are the fastest growing prison population in Canada. We recognize the longstanding impacts that women from Labrador are facing when removed from their communities and families, while not being offered adequate culturally appropriate supports and traditional medicines throughout the criminal justice system.

Prisons require adequate health care. This means comprehensive and trauma-informed health care, including psychiatric treatment and mental health care – both proactive and crisis response care, acute care, and supportive reproductive health care. The Canadian Supreme Court has ruled solitary confinement as unconstitutional, recognizing that it has been used to discriminately target Indigenous people and people living with mental illness. Solitary confinement should not be used as mental health care or crisis response practice in our province’s prisons.

To begin to truly engage the fundamental changes need in our criminal justice system, we must learn from criminalized women and their families, listening to their needs, and advocating for better futures for all of them:

“As a former inmate in Clarenville and NOVA, I think this report in itself is well written and well put together, however it’s nothing that hasn’t already been said about prisons in NL. It’s nothing that Decades of Darkness didn’t already report in 2008. These recommendations are nothing new – it all comes back down to having the Government actually implement recommendations and changes.

Building new facilities and new sections onto existing buildings here looks fine and dandy as a media moment but ultimately, it’s not about the buildings, it’s about what is happening inside of them and the resources that do and do not exist for us in there. I was like the majority of women in Clarenville when I was an inmate there, and had already been sexually assaulted, survived domestic violence, and had experienced trauma throughout my life. We do not need more corrections we need trained counsellors who specialized in trauma, we need social workers who understand addictions and their root causes, we need mental health advocates, we need psychiatry and basic healthcare that is compassionate, comprehensive and follows best-practice instead of punitive-practice.”

– Formerly incarcerated woman from NL, speaking to SJSWC staff this week

Beyond addressing the dire conditions within our province’s prisons, we believe our government should be directly facing issues of unaffordable housing, poverty, and the lack of available mental health and addictions services. Vast and immediate changes must happen both inside and outside of prisons and must be conducted in partnership with frontline organizations and services supporting criminalized women before, during, and after incarceration. The creation of a women’s Justice Support Worker position, which we have proposed to the Department of Justice and Public Safety, is one important step towards providing greater supports for women in our criminal justice system.

Prisons must be a place where rehabilitation can begin, where options can be accessible, where even hope and healing can grow. The recent deaths of several vulnerable people in prisons in our province demonstrates that this was not their experience.

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Media Contact
Robyn Pike
Development and Communications Coordinator
St. John’s Status of Women Council/Women’s Centre
Tel. 709.753.0220
robyn@sjwomenscentre.ca

About St. John’s Status of Women Council/Women’s Centre
The St. John’s Status of Women Council/Women’s Centre is a feminist organization that since 1972 is continually working to achieve equality and justice through political activism, community collaboration and the creation of a safe and inclusive space for all women in the St. John’s area. The St. John’s Status of Women Council operates the Women’s Centre, Marguerite’s Place Supportive Housing Program and the Safe Harbour Outreach Project.

PANSOW calls for changes to justice system following the death of two women at the NL Correctional Centre for Women

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The Provincial Action Network on the Status of Women (PANSOW) stands in solidarity with families of incarcerated women. We join them in calling on the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador to initiate long overdue changes within our provincial justice system.

The 2008 report, Decades of Darkness: Moving Towards the Light – A review of the prison systems in Newfoundland and Labrador noted that many of those who are housed in our provincial prisons are there for crimes stemming from poverty, addictions, and mental health issues. Yet adequate and appropriate programming and services, especially gender-specific programming, to address these needs are not present within our correctional institutions. Prisons are not equipped to deal with these issues and the living conditions in these institutions often lead to deterioration of mental health. We are at a critical moment following the deaths of two women at the NL Correctional Centre for Women, change through community collaboration is paramount.

Samantha Piercey, who died in prison last month, died on remand. Charged, but not convicted of a crime. Unfortunately, our province has some of the highest rates of remand in the country. Whenever possible, individuals on remand should remain in the community with supports.

There is an immediate and critical need for supports, staffing and resources, gender-specific health care, an alleviation of overcrowding, and incidents of lock down. We are supportive of the independent review initiated by Minister Parsons however we ask for civilian oversight of this process and the involvement of incarcerated women and their families.

Media Contacts
Paula Sheppard Thibeau
Executive Director
Corner Brook Status of Women Council
Tel. 709.639.8522
cbwomenscentre@gmail.com

Jenny Wright
Executive Director
St. John’s Status of Women Council
PANSOW, Co-Chair
Tel: 709.753.0220
jenny@sjwomenscentre.ca

About PANSOW
The Provincial Action Network on the Status of Women (PANSOW) is a grassroots, feminist, and non-partisan network which gives a provincial voice on the issues facing the Status of Women in Newfoundland and Labrador. PANSOW consists of all eight Status of Women Councils in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Statement in response to NLCCW’s women’s letter

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We are in awe of the strength of women in the Newfoundland and Labrador Correctional Centre for Women (NLCCW) in Clarenville, who have written a letter addressing their grief and distress following the recent death of two women they were incarcerated with. As advocates for women across our province, we know the importance of amplifying the voices of women when they speak about their own experiences of injustice, and we recognize the powerful act of speaking out in the wake of these tragedies.

As women in NLCCW have said:

“So with these things happening and inmates being neglected at the wrong times, how can any of us feel safe?”

The St. John’s Status of Women Council and all our programs (St. John’s Women’s Centre, Marguerite’s Place supportive housing program, and the Safe Harbour Outreach Project) echo and validate the concerns that women have identified. Like these women, we have come to see the impacts on women who need mental health services, holistic health care, housing, culturally appropriate Indigenous supports, counselling, and support for the violence they have experienced yet receive time behind bars. We believe our province has the ability to act now to address chronically overcrowded and under-resourced prisons and must act now to divert women in our criminal justice system to essential services and supports that they need and are identifying.

In recognizing the disconnect between the inmates’ feelings of safety, and the response from our institutions, we call for immediate action, transparency, and accountability from the departments and institutions who are responsible for incarcerated people in our province and any action to be done in consultation with front line community advocates for prisoners. Once again, we call on the provincial Department of Justice and Public Safety for an immediate assessment of the needs of people in our prisons with public oversight.

We continue to hold the families and friends of Skye Martin and Samantha Piercey in our thoughts.

Statement on the tragic death of an incarcerated woman in Clarenville

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With the recent news of the death of a woman who was incarcerated in the Newfoundland and Labrador Correctional Centre for Women in Clarenville, our immediate thoughts went to her family and loved ones, and all the women who remain in the Clarenville prison. We mourn and remember her.

For the last five years, staff from the St. John’s Women’s Centre, Marguerite’s Place supportive housing program, and the Safe Harbour Outreach Project (SHOP) have been welcomed into this women’s prison – the only official women’s prison in our province – to provide more community support, programming, and advocacy for criminalized women before, during, and after their incarceration.

Through this work, we have come to know that the majority of incarcerated women are women living below the poverty line, women dealing with homelessness and unstable, unsafe housing, women who are Indigenous, women who have untreated mental health care needs and untreated addictions, and women who have experienced sexual and physical violence. We have come to see the impacts of our province sending some of our most marginalized women to chronically overcrowded and under-resourced prisons instead of doing the work to divert women in our criminal justice system to essential services and supports that they need.

These are women from our communities, from our towns, from our outports, from our provinces, from our lands, and we have a responsibility to remember them and make sure they are not left behind. We must amplify the voices and experiences of women behind bars.

During this tragic time, we are listening to women who are grieving, offering kindness and care, and telling everyone who will listen that women in prisons are valued and loved. We recognize incarcerated women for their dignity, their ability to care for one another behind prison walls, and their resilience.

We call on our communities to join us in learning from criminalized women, listening to their needs, and advocating for better futures for all of them. We also call on the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador to organize an immediate assessment on the health care needs of women in prison, to be conducted in partnership with front line services and organizations supporting criminalized women before, during, and after incarceration.