Canadian inmates still face isolation amounting to torture, experts say

This story includes mentions of suicide and self-harm.

Olivier has made more than 30 trips to "the hole," since he was incarcerated in Canadian federal prison 10 years ago. He said he sometimes spent up to eight months in what was known up until a few years ago as administrative segregation.

"The hole: it's hell on earth, I can tell you," he told Radio-Canada's investigative program Enquête, which agreed to withhold his full name. 

Olivier said, without much human contact, his lengthy stays had a major impact on his mental health, leading him to self-harm and even to attempt suicide.

"My heart started beating faster, I was sweating. I thought I was dying, Sometimes I had the impression that I had left my body," he said.

"My cell was closing in on me."

Following court rulings finding inmates' charter rights were being violated, the Canadian government officially abolished administrative segregation in November 2019 and replaced it with a new system known as structured intervention units (SIU). 

But an Enquête investigation has found the new system is still being used more often — and for longer periods of time — than intended.

Under the SIU system, inmates must be granted at least four hours a day outside their cells, including two hours of "meaningful human contact."

According to the UN's Nelson Mandela rules, adopted in 2015, isolation for more than 22 hours a day amounts to solitary confinement, and solitary confinement lasting more than 15 days amounts to torture.

New data shared with Enquête found that between November 2019 and August 2021, 1,732 inmates, equivalent to 8.4 per cent of the prison population, were placed in SIUs.

Of their stays, 55 per cent were longer than 30 days and 22.5 per cent were between 60 and 552 days, according to the data from an upcoming report by Howard Sapers, former correctional investigator of Canada and head of an advisory panel overseeing SIUs.

These findings follow research conducted since 2020 by Jane Sprott, a criminology professor at Ryerson University and Anthony Doob, professor emeritus in criminology at the University of Toronto and former chair of the advisory panel.

The pair found that nearly 30 per cent of inmates in SIUs did not get four hours outside of their cells all or part of the time, and roughly 10 per cent had stays met the UN definition of torture.