July 17, 2015 – Anna Mehler Paperny, Global News
A Toronto law firm has launched a class action suit against the federal government over the treatment of prison inmates with mental illness.
March 5, 2015 – Anna Mehler Paperny, Global News
Federal prisons are losing 515 acute-care beds, which are being transferred to provide “intermediate” psychiatric care as Corrections Canada struggles to cope with a crisis of mental illness among offenders.
November 12, 2014 – Anna Mehler Paperny, Global News
Last May, as Global News published an investigation showing Canada’s sickest inmates are held in its deadliest prisons, Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney pledged to take seriously the treatment of mentally ill inmates – starting with a two-bed pilot project at a facility designed for offenders with severe mental illness.
More than six months later, that two-bed pilot project has yet to materialize. The federal government, for its part, points to an interim agreement for one woman as progress in itself.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
a business of misfits 