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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Anna Mehler Paperny, Global News
As the federal Conservatives push to stiffen sentences for mentally ill offenders, Ontario is beefing up a forensic psychiatric system under increasing strain – its user population has quadrupled in two decades.
Anna Mehler Paperny and Lindsey Addawoo, Global News
The federal government’s new rules for mentally ill offenders, meant to make public safety paramount, could do the opposite, critics charge – endangering public safety by putting sick people back on the street without the treatment they need.
a business of misfits 