Staff  in  Canadian  women`s  prisons  are  sometimes  very  stupid

The text that that has a white background is simply an anomaly in the printing.

 

What follows are two examples of real stupidity.

On October the 19^th, 2007, Ashley Smith was under a suicide watch at the Grand Valley Institution for Women. (a federal institution for women) Despite guards watching her on video monitors, she was able to choke herself to death with a strip of cloth rammed down her throat. It was several hours before guards or supervisors realized that she was actually dead despite the fact that they had observed the skin on her face turning from pink to purple and finally to blue. They claimed that they thought that she was merely playing dead. Oh please. Give me a break. The warden and deputy warden were fired after the incident, and though the guards and supervisors were initially charged with negligence, those charges were dropped a year later. Smith's family brought a $1 million wrongful death lawsuit against the Correctional Service of Canada for negligence; this lawsuit was settled out of court in May 2011.

How did this stupid blunder come about? Perhaps by looking at her background, we can find the answer.

Ashley Smith was born on January 29, 1988, in New Brunswick, Canada and was adopted when she was 5 days old. Her adoptive parents Coralee Smith and Herbert Gober, the girl had a normal childhood in Moncton,New Brunswick. However, sometime between 13 and 14, they noted distinct behavioural changes in the Ashlkey and by age 15, she had been before juvenile court 14 times for various minor offences such as trespassing and causing a disturbance. In March 2002, Smith was assessed by a psychologist who found no evidence of mental illness.

Despite that fact, her behavioural problems continued and she was suspended from school multiple times in the fall of 2002. In March 2003, after multiple court appearances, Smith was admitted to the Pierre Caissie Centre for assessment. She was diagnosed with ADHD, (Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, which is a learning disorder), borderline personality disorderand narcissistic personality traits. She was discharged several days early from the Centre for unruly and disruptive behaviour and returned to the New Brunswick Youth Centre (NBYC). She was then remanded to the NBYC multiple times over the next 3 years; during this time she was involved in more than 800 reported incidents and at least 150 attempts to physically harm herself. There was definitely something wrong with this young woman.
 
On the 29^th of January 2006, Ashley turned 18 and on the 29^th of July, a motion was made under the Youth Criminal Justice Act to transfer her to an adult facility. Smith hired a lawyer to fight the transfer, but was unsuccessful. On October the 5^th, she was transferred to the Saint John Regional Correctional Centre (SJRCC). Due to her behaviour at SJRCC, Smith spent most of her time there in segregation. She was also tasered twice and pepper-sprayed once. On October the 31^st, Smith was transferred to the Nova Institution for Women in Nova Scotia (a federal institution). For 11 months in 2007, Smith was transferred a total of 17 times between 8 institutions whiles she was in federal custody.

It is  ironic when you think about it. Her imprisonment from 2003 began after throwing crab apples at the mailman. On her first day of incarceration, Smith was placed in solitary confinement after disruptive behavior. Her initial one month sentence would last almost four years, entirely in isolation, until her suicide in 2007.

What I don`t understand is why professional help wasn`t made available to her. She should have been placed in a mental health facility instead of prisons where the staff really didn`t know how to treat prisoners that are this mentally ill.

 Often her violent and unpredictable, behaviour and the force required to intervene were always filmed and recorded, then listed on daily logs. Some of the behaviour problems which Smith exhibited included many attempts at choking herself into unconsciousness with the guards then responding to her attempts at choking herself and being attacked by Smith for their troubles; sometimes with weapons she'd manufactured and concealed.

According to an internal document obtained and partially read aloud by Gartner, eventually Corrections Canada administrators instructed guards and supervisors not to respond to self-strangling attempts by Smith. The orders said in part; ”to ignore her, even if she was choking herself”.

I can appreciate the fact that every time the guards entered her cell after she was choking herself, they were attacked by her and this was of some considerable concern to them and the senior staff members.

 On October 11th, 2007, the day that this young woman died in her cell, the guards were told that they were not to go into her cell until she had stopped breathing, As she was dying on the floor, they watched her as blood vessels in her face broke, her nose began bleeding and her face was turning purple and finally blue. Then they began counting the number of times she breathed each minute until she wasn't breathing at all. By the time they finally went into her cell, she was beyond any help. She had slowly died right in front of them.

 What I don’t understand however is if they were told not to enter her cell until she stopped breathing, why they didn’t enter her cell when she wasn’t breathing or even moving at all. No one can remain permanently still for several hours. Even the most stupid person on earth must surely know that when anyone is not breathing, they are dead. These dummies that were watching her on the TV monitor should have gone to her cell and if they were too afraid to enter her cell, they could have sent more staff into her cell to make sure that she didn't overpower them. If there was no reaction when they touched her, they might have been able to revive her. Instead, they looked at a dead body for hours. By the time they had the courage to enter her cell; she was well beyond any hope of ever being revived.

And now, the second example of stupidity.

Twenty-six-year-old Julie Bilotta, was being held at the Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre as she waited for her trial on drug and fraud charges. She was pregnant while in the jail and began having labour pains. When she continued to moan in pain as her contractions worsened, the guards responded by saying she was making too much noise in the cell she shared with two other inmates.

She went into labour on the Sept. 29^th of 2012, but the jail guards and the nurse dismissed her complaints, suggesting it was indigestion or false labour. I have to point out that the nurse that examined her didn’t do a thorough check. Instead she foolishly made the presumption that the prisoner wasn’t in labour. Would any of you want this woman looking after you? I hardly think so. However, prisoners have no choice to choose the nurse that is going to look after them. They risk getting a dummy for a nurse and in this case, that is what Julie got—a dummy for a nurse.

 That same day, Julie gave birth prematurely to a boy on the floor of the segregation cell she was put in.

The minister in charge of prisons and jails in Ontario disputed the notion that there is a systemic failure to provide adequate care to inmates, although she has also said that pregnant inmates should expect to receive the same level of care as women in the general population. If she really believes that, the first thing she should do is fire that particular nurse. I can`t blame the guards because they were simply following the advice of the nurse.

There you have it. I have the following advice to give my readers. First, don`t fake suicide attempts in prison. Future attempts might later be considered by the staff as being no different that that of the boy who cried wolf. Your final attempt may be the one that kills you since it is highly conceivable that the guards watching you die will be as stupid as the ones who watched Ashley Smith die. Secondly, if you are expecting a baby when you are going to jail, make sure that a doctor or qualified nurse examines you when it is visibly apparent that you are expecting a baby. This last suggestion is directed to women only of course. You knew that, didn`t you. Well, maybe the dummy nurse in Ashley Smith`s prison didn`t know that but everyone else knows that.