O Canada! > Canadian > Canadian Chat > [Serious] Statists, be proud! re: Ashley Smith

“How can it get worse?”

Ashley Smith asks the question in a childlike moan.

Aboard a small government plane, 33,000 feet in the air somewhere between Saskatoon and Montreal, the teen inmate can’t fathom a fate worse than what has just befallen her in a period of six minutes.

Her forearms are shackled to the seat’s armrests, a hood of black netting and canvas is pulled over her head of long, wavy brown hair and tied around her neck. The plane’s co-pilot, a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, has just bound her wrists together with duct tape, restricting her as though in a straitjacket. And she is sitting in her own feces.

But it does get worse.

Three months later, no fewer than seven prison staff dressed in black helmets, gas masks and hazmat-type suits will pin her limp body to a metal gurney. Two will crouch on her legs to hold down her hips while others press a clear plastic riot shield to her belly. They will inject her with anti-psychotic drugs.

“You have to co-operate,” a woman identified on prison surveillance videos as Nurse Melanie tells a docile Smith.

“You have no choice.”

Federal prison lawyers argued a motion on Wednesday asking the coroner to dramatically narrow the inquest’s scope to examine only the final seven days of her life in custody.

Anything more, said Correctional Service lawyer Nancy Noble, would turn the inquest into a “full-blown inquiry into the operations and management of Correctional Service Canada, which is not permitted.”

The video is meant to horrify but that doesn't mean what was being done to the girl wasn't done for good reason.

I saw what appears, at first blush, to be an abuse of the system, but that's the beauty of our judicial system, one has the opportunity to hear both sides of the story before making a judgement and here we're just seeing/reading one side of the issue.

The system failed for Ashley, and the way she was allowed to be treated is nothing short of criminal.

And what exactly did they think the likeliest outcome was going to be? A cure? Even my uneducated mind can tell they set this girl up to kill herself. The people involved should be brought up on charges. This is a disgusting way to treat another human being.

Sunshine list? Don't make me laugh. Outside of psychiatrists and a few administrators, there are damned few there. Of all the mental health workers in our area (there are about 90 in the outpatient sector) exactly one is on the Sunshine List and she works 80 hours a week.

Then advocate for change. Demand better. Demand better funding. Demand early interventions. Demand alcohol harm reduction strategies (you were aware that a huge number of people in the corrections system are diagnosed with FASD and self-medicate?).

God bless the pre-moderated CBC comments section:

No, the "system" did not "fail". The "system" is not well designed to handle people with severe mental health issues and especially those under 17 in the first place.

What you are seeing is not "criminal" but the result of inadequate funding, planning and nothing shot of a "system" in crisis. There are alternatives. Sadly, our "crime and punishment" mentality (and that of the current government in Ottawa) is nothing but a massive failure for people with serious medical conditions who commit crimes.

People will go on and on and on about a girl who offs themselves after some melodramatic video on Youtube because they can't turn off Facebook, but god forbid we give a damn when a girl that same age has the same thing happen by the people who are supposed to help her. The system failed for Ashley, and the way she was allowed to be treated is nothing short of criminal.

What you are seeing is not "criminal" but the result of inadequate funding, planning and nothing shot of a "system" in crisis.

There are plenty of examples through history from the Stanford Prison Experiment to Auschwitz and to give some of these people a pass because of systemic funding problems is shameful.