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| John L. Hill |
Her psychiatric diagnosis was made only after she was transferred from the prison system to the mental health system. Mills was originally sentenced to four years after pleading guilty in a Halifax courtroom in 1993 to discharging a firearm with intent to endanger life. That sentence was later increased to 10 years after she was convicted of acting out and assaulting guards.
Instead of help and rehabilitation, she was isolated and abused. It was only after a judge in Amherst, N.S., recognized her need for help in 2001 that she received treatment. She faced a charge of assaulting another inmate at Springhill Institution, a men’s prison that housed a few maximum-security women. She was ordered to be placed in a mental health facility rather than in prison. After four years of treatment, she was released into the community under a mental health supervision order.
The isolation took its toll on her. She told CBC’s Maureen Brosnahan that frustration with her prison treatment caused her outbursts. “They were terrified because every chance I got I would hit them. [It was] really impulsive but it was because they were being so harsh with me and the way they were treating me just made me angry,” she said. Her frustration also led to self-harm. She cut herself, tied ligatures around her neck and even drove staples into her face.
Following the 2019 finding that solitary confinement was unconstitutional, the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) created structured intervention units (SIUs). The head of the SIU Implementation Panel, criminologist Anthony Doob, argued that SIUs often amounted to mere rebranding of solitary confinement and failed to meet the legal requirements for time limits and consultation. The torture of solitary confinement remained, with only a name change.
Sen. Kim Pate sponsored Senate Bill S-205 (now S-230). The proposed legislation aimed to address objections that the current SIU system continued to violate human rights, including the Mandela Rules, which ban the isolation of prisoners for more than 15 days. It has been noted that the CSC has failed to manage health risks, including self-harm and suicide associated with isolation. Sen. Pate’s Senate bill was named Tona’s Law in honour of the woman who endured mistreatment by the CSC during her time in federal custody.
The bill included four measures to end isolation in penitentiaries:
1. Court oversight: Prison authorities seeking to isolate someone for longer than 48 hours must obtain court approval, reflecting the timeframe in which irreversible harm can begin. Prisoners may ask a court for a reduced sentence or a reduced parole ineligibility period when conditions such as segregation make their sentence harsher than the one they were ordered to serve.
2. Accountability for isolation: SIUs will be defined to include any separation from a prison’s general population under more restrictive conditions, so that rules relating to SIUs, including court oversight, apply to everyone experiencing isolation.
3. Effective mental health screenings: Prisoners must be transferred to provincial health systems, including forensic hospitals, for mental health treatment if they are found to have disabling mental health issues, or for mental health assessment if a qualified mental health professional is not available in the prison to perform the assessment.
4. The need to address the release plan for overrepresented groups, such as Indigenous and Black inmates. Tona’s Law recognizes that systemic discrimination and colonialism have led to Indigenous women and others most in need of community support and connection being incarcerated, labelled as high risk, and locked in SIUs. This legislation will invigorate ss. 81 and 84 of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, which allow people to serve sentences and be released into Indigenous communities. Tona’s Law would address government underfunding and underuse, as documented by the Office of the Correctional Investigator and countless other experts.
2. Accountability for isolation: SIUs will be defined to include any separation from a prison’s general population under more restrictive conditions, so that rules relating to SIUs, including court oversight, apply to everyone experiencing isolation.
3. Effective mental health screenings: Prisoners must be transferred to provincial health systems, including forensic hospitals, for mental health treatment if they are found to have disabling mental health issues, or for mental health assessment if a qualified mental health professional is not available in the prison to perform the assessment.
4. The need to address the release plan for overrepresented groups, such as Indigenous and Black inmates. Tona’s Law recognizes that systemic discrimination and colonialism have led to Indigenous women and others most in need of community support and connection being incarcerated, labelled as high risk, and locked in SIUs. This legislation will invigorate ss. 81 and 84 of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, which allow people to serve sentences and be released into Indigenous communities. Tona’s Law would address government underfunding and underuse, as documented by the Office of the Correctional Investigator and countless other experts.
Critics of Tona’s Law focus on its potential cost, implementation challenges and the view that such reforms should be initiated by the government rather than through a private member’s bill.
Conservative Sen. Claude Carignan, a vocal critic, argued that the bill could cost $2 billion and impose significant new burdens on already stressed public health and justice systems. Critics also argue that such complex changes to the prison system should come directly from the federal government, which has the necessary tools to implement a new system. While the bill aims to enforce judicial oversight of isolation, some stakeholders, such as the Canadian Bar Association, have expressed concern that simply transferring individuals from SIUs to maximum-security populations might not provide a meaningful remedy. Opponents have also pointed out that increasing judges’ involvement in operational prison decisions will create more court traffic rather than addressing the underlying issues within the correctional system.
On Dec.10, the Senate passed Tona’s Law, Bill S-230, a culmination of years of work on the human rights of federal prisoners. It is now up to the House of Commons to pass the bill into law. Tona Mills will not see Tona’s Law enacted. On Feb. 20, Sen. Kim Pate posted a heartfelt goodbye to Tona Mills on Facebook following her passing from terminal cancer.
John L. Hill practised and taught prison law until his retirement. He holds a JD from Queen’s and an LLM in constitutional law from Osgoode Hall. He is also the author of Pine Box Parole: Terry Fitzsimmons and the Quest to End Solitary Confinement (Durvile & UpRoute Books) and The Rest of the (True Crime) Story (AOS Publishing). Contact him at johnlornehill@hotmail.com.
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