September 8, 2014 – Anna Mehler Paperny, Global News
Ontario jails have become so short-staffed they’re routinely locked down because there aren’t enough guards to keep them running safely.
Ontario’s short-staffed jails face chronic lockdowns
Global News – Death Behind Bars
Mentally ill inmate isn’t a dangerous offender, judge finds
July 25, 2014 – Anna Mehler Paperny, Global News
Marlene Carter, a 43-year-old inmate with severe mental illness who’s spent much of her five years behind bars tied to a plank, bed or chair in a solitary cell, is not a dangerous offender, a judge has ruled.
Some mentally ill inmates face solitary confinement by another name
July 24, 2014 – Anna Mehler Paperny, Global News
Special designations for federal inmates with the most complex psychiatric needs often result in their being kept in what is, effectively, solitary confinement – just don’t call it that.
Tied down in solitary for years, is sick inmate a dangerous offender?
Feds defunding program for freed high-risk sex offenders
June 17, 2014 – Anna Mehler Paperny, Global News
An organization that works with the most high-risk sex offenders after they’re released from prison is scrambling for new funding sources as the federal government prepares to cut it off.
Ottawa ‘delisting’ hospital beds at prison treatment facilities
June 5, 2014 – Anna Mehler Paperny, Global News
The federal government plans to “delist” psychiatric beds in its prison treatment facilities, designating them as more general beds for housing inmates.
Ottawa considers closing some prison psychiatric beds: Watchdog
June 2, 2014 – Anna Mehler Paperny, Global News
Ottawa is considering closing psychiatric beds in federal prisons barely a month after announcing a new strategy on inmates with mental illness, the federal prison watchdog says.
At the same time, it has cut back on nursing hours, even as federal prisons are seeing more assaults, more injuries and more use of force – medical incidents that corrections officers, even ones trained in first aid, aren’t prepared to handle.
Mental illness overwhelms prisons, police: ‘We have an urgent problem’
May 13, 2014 – Anna Mehler Paperny, Global News
Abbotsford Police routinely spend the night dealing with people who aren’t criminals.
They’ll spend hours, Chief Constable Bob Rich told a parliamentary committee, in emergency rooms waiting for individuals they’ve apprehended to see a doctor.
Tories’ plan for women inmates ‘too little, too late’
May 6, 2014 – Anna Mehler Paperny, Global News
A Global News investigation revealing the prevalence of death and violence in psychiatric hospitals underscores the need to act on the mental illness crisis in Canada’s prisons, opposition critics say.
Death behind bars: The interviews we didn’t get
This is the closest we got to Saskatoon’s Regional Psychiatric Centre.
May 1, 2014 – Global News
Journos grow thick skins thanks to frequent rejection (and no, not just the social kind). But in the interest of transparency we wanted to elucidate the public bodies we’ve tried to access for this story, only to be refused.
a business of misfits 