MPs question Ashley Smith death

Solutions begin with changing how the system treats people who self-harm.

by Ish Theilheimer and Samantha Bayard

OTTAWA, Straight Goods News, November 1, 2012: Interim Liberal leader Bob Rae said today that the tragic case of teenager Ashley Smith, who committed suicide at Grand Valley Institution for Women in 2007, shows the Harper government wants to sweep the mistreatment of young people with mental health problems in Canadian prisons under the rug.

"Governments have a responsibility to get to the bottom of it and rather than doing that what we’ve seen is this government has done everything it can to prevent information from coming out," said interim Liberal leader Bob Rae.

Bob Rae says Ashley Smith's death should never have happened

NDP public safety critic Randall Garrison (Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca) was not as critical of the government. "I think there’s some value in the coroner’s inquest," he told reporters, But it’s really a rear view mirror and arguing about jurisdiction at the inquest isn’t going to solve the problem."

Garrison said solutions come from the Correctional Investigator, who, "Made very clear recommendations that we have to change the way the system treats people who self-harm in prison. So if you break your leg, you go out and you get special treatment to fix your leg. What we’ve traditionally done is people who self-harm are treated as acting out or misbehaving and they go into segregation so very clear recommendations that we not use prolonged segregation for people who do self-harm, that we get outside medical assistance for those people if it’s not available in the system and the CorrectionalInvestigator said we need an outside clinician to evaluate how we’re treating people with self-harm."
 

© Copyright 2012 Ish Theilheimer and Samantha Bayard, All rights Reserved. Written For: StraightGoods.ca