By Catherine Fogarty
In November 2019, Structured Intervention Units (SIUs) were implemented by the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) in all federal prisons to replace the old solitary confinement system. This new system was supposed to improve the lives of segregated prisoners who were often confined twenty-three and a half hours a day in small windowless cells with one hour of exercise and limited human contact. Inmates placed in the new structured intervention units would receive four hours out of their cells and at least two hours of meaningful human contact.
SIUs were introduced after the passing of Bill C-83 in June 2019. The bill was the government’s response to two lawsuits. The British Columbia Civil Liberties Association and the John Howard Society of Canada sued the federal government over the use of solitary confinement, arguing it was unconstitutional, increased inmates’ suffering, and discriminated against offenders who are Indigenous or have mental-health issues.
The primary legislative intent was to abolish solitary confinement as defined by the United Nations Mandela Rules (confining inmates for twenty-two hours or more a day without “meaningful human contact”). The new system was to impose an initial limit of no more than fifteen days of confinement and introduce judicial oversight or independent adjudication for any length of stay in segregation beyond that time.
But an independent report and investigation released a year later in October 2020 indicated that very little has changed with respect to the number of hours and days prisoners spend in solitary confinement in Canada’s sixteen federal prisons, and in fact Corrections Canada was unable to supply the correct data to a panel of academic experts reviewing the implementation of the new structured intervention units. It appears that SIUs are just a fancy new title for a barbaric practice that has been going on behind closed prison doors in Canada for a very long time.
The Warden and Inmates Negotiate (Photo provided by the author).
Fifty years ago, on April 14, 1971, inmates at Kingston Penitentiary, Canada’s oldest prison, overpowered unsuspecting guards and instigated one of the most violent and destructive prison riots in our country’s history. Prisoners were protesting against decrepit living conditions, overcrowding, inadequate rehabilitation programs, and harsh punishments. Step out of line and you went to the “hole” an escape-proof cellblock located in a concrete bunker. There were twenty metal doors and behind each door an inmate was confined twenty-three and a half hours a day, with one half-hour of exercise in a small, segregated yard. Sound familiar? Continue reading
For more than twenty years I lived in a small, rural central Ontario community. I did not grow up on a farm, I was, however encouraged to help out on the local farms that surrounded our property. This involved planting, harvesting, cleaning cattle pens, haying and taking care of animals. Our home was located on Line 1, Oro Township in the County of Simcoe. Of historical significance, line 1 or Wilberforce Street was the location of a British government sponsored settlement of veterans from the War of 1812, specifically veterans of Captain Runchey’s Corps of Coloured Men. 
