Social Policy in Ontario

Ontario review of psychiatric wait times in jail kept secret

Posted on January 15, 2015 in Child & Family Debates

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TheStar.com – News/Canada – Ontario is keeping secret a review of wait times for prisoners seeking psychiatric treatment in provincial jails.
Jan 15 2015.   By: Amy Dempsey

Ontario has completed a review of wait times for inmates seeking psychiatric treatment in provincial jails, but the corrections ministry is keeping the results secret.

The ministry committed to the review as part of a landmark settlement reached in September 2013 with Christina Jahn, an Ottawa prisoner with a mental illness and terminal cancer who was kept in solitary confinement for more than 200 days.

Ministry spokesman Brent Ross said the review of wait times will be used to “inform the ongoing work that we are doing to transform the correctional system,” but it will not be made public because it contains “confidential information.”

The ministry would not say what kind of confidential information the report contains or explain why the wait times could not be isolated and provided separately from the review.

“That makes no sense,” said Paul Champ, an Ottawa lawyer who represented Jahn in the case before the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario. “If the ministry knows these wait times, the hard data should be disclosed so it can be reviewed and discussed by the public and experts in the field.”

The Jahn settlement forced the ministry to agree to sweeping changes to better meet the mental health needs of inmates. The promised “public interest remedies” — or “Jahn remedies,” as they have since become known — were detailed in a six-page document signed Sept. 24, 2013, with deadlines ranging from six to 18 months.

Among the commitments: screening all inmates for mental illness;training front-line staff on mental health issues;measuring the need for a psychiatric treatment centre for female prisoners; and only using solitary confinement as a last resort for people with mental illness.

Champ commended the ministry for committing to the systemic changes, but he said it has been difficult to assess the impact. When Jahn was in segregation at the Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre, Champ said, she saw the jail’s overworked psychiatrists infrequently and often only for a few minutes through a hatch in her cell door.

Having a baseline measurement of psychiatric wait times across Ontario would help experts in the field assess the impact of the ministry’s changes in the coming years, and making that information public would enhance accountability, Champ argued.

The ministry has changed its policies, he noted, “but we don’t know that they’ve changed their practices.”

Across Ontario, prisoners with mental illnesses continue to be placed in solitary confinement. The Star reported in December that a state-of-the-art infirmary and mental health unit at the Toronto South Detention Centre in Etobicoke remain closed nearly one year after the new superjail opened its doors to inmates. The ministry confirmed that inmates are being housed in solitary confinement under the label of “medical segregation,” which will continue until at least the spring — the earliest the health care units are expected to open.

A ministry spokesman said the findings of the psychiatric wait-time review have been provided to the Ontario Human Rights Commission, which is overseeing the ministry’s implementation of the Jahn remedies. The commission contradicted that claim.

“While the Ministry has provided the Commission with written confirmation that it has completed this commitment, it has not provided us with a copy of the review or its results,” commission spokeswoman Afroze Edwards said in an email, noting that the terms of the Jahn settlement do not require the ministry to do so. Another commission spokeswoman noted that there has been some discussion by email about the review.

Jahn’s 2012 human rights complaint against the Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services alleged she was discriminated against at the Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre because she was placed in segregation instead of receiving treatment for her mental illness. Jahn spent 210 days in solitary confinement during two separate periods of incarceration in 2011 and 2012. She was serving sentences for charges including theft, assault, mischief, resisting arrest and causing a disturbance.

The complaint alleged she experienced “brutal and humiliating treatment,” was beaten, deprived of basic hygiene privileges and denied access to cancer medication under the presumption that she was too dangerous to administer drugs to, which led to an emergency mastectomy 10 days after she was released in August 2011.

On the first day of the human rights tribunal hearing in September 2013, the two sides agreed to a settlement, which awarded Jahn an undisclosed cash sum and required the ministry to commit to the public interest remedies.Her lawyer said the ministry had offered a cash settlement without committing to the remedies before the hearing, but Jahn would not agree to it.

“One of the main things we wanted to achieve in the settlement was mechanisms of accountability,” Champ said. “That was very important to Christina.”

Jahn, who has late-stage cancer, declined to speak to the Star for this story. Her sister, Angelique Jahn, expressed disappointment with the ministry on her behalf.“I don’t see any confidential information in finding out what a wait time is,” the sister said. “If they won’t disclose that, then it’s still the same old, same old … that’s how I perceive it.”

Jahn said her sister continues to deal with the emotional impact of her time in segregation.

“She had psychological issues before she went in, but after what — I’m going to call it the torture — they put her through, she will never be the same,” the sister said. “What it did to her is irreversible.”

< http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2015/01/15/ontario-review-of-psychiatric-wait-times-in-jail-kept-secret.html >

Tags: corrections, disabilities, Health, ideology, mental Health, rights, standard of living

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