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.
mental health
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.
Alone with their thoughts: Why put sick people in solitary?
May 1, 2014 – Global News
Rick Raemish spent 20 hours in solitary confinement – exhausted, unable to sleep and bored out of his mind – because he wanted to.
Investigation: Canada’s psychiatric prisons have highest death, assault rates
May 1, 2014 – Global News
Offenders are more likely to die or be violently attacked in a psychiatric prison than any other federal institution – by a long shot.
The people in these specialized facilities – in B.C., Saskatchewan, Ontario, Quebec – are the most vulnerable and problematic in a prison system already overflowing with mental illness.
And numbers obtained by Global News through an access to information request indicate they’re disproportionately subject to violence and death in the institutions supposedly designed to care for them best.
Do police have my mental heath info? Will it get me barred from the U.S.?
April 15, 2014 – Global News
In the wake of a report castigating police forces for automatically disclosing and sharing suicide attempts – info that gets into the hands of U.S. border guards, among others – many are wondering what bits of their personal info police databases might have, and whether it could prove compromising when crossing the border.
Would tougher NCR rules keep Vince Li from reoffending?
Feb. 28, 2014 – Global News
The federal government seized on the news this week that Vince Li, who beheaded a man on a Greyhound bus six years ago, has been granted unescorted trips outside the forensic psychiatric hospital where he’s been in custody.
Opponents prepare to implement crime bill under fire for lack of evidence
Anna Mehler Paperny – Global News
The experts who’ve argued so vehemently against Ottawa’s bill cracking down on the most mentally ill offenders are preparing to implement it, even though the federal government hasn’t been able to produce any evidence indicating it’s necessary.
In Nunavut, the problems are familiar – and so are the solutions
Tuesday, August 18, 2009 – Globe and Mail
ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY
It took a photo of two boys sleeping on the pavement in Iqaluit to show Canada the face of a young population in crisis.
But the problems behind that crisis, and the steps needed to remedy them, were painstakingly laid out in a 92-page document released in 2006.
Three years later, little has changed. The problems the report outlines as urgent concerns are still prevalent. The steps it recommends to address them are in the early stages, if they exist at all.
a business of misfits 