Reflection 3: Ashley Smith and What Are Prisons For?

Ashley Smith was a happy little girl born in New Brunswick on January 29, 1988. She was adopted by Coralee Smith when Ashley was five-days-old. She had a normal childhood. Coralee Smith later became the partner of Herbert Gober when Ashley was three-years-old. Then in 2001, when Ashley was thirteen or fourteen, Herbert and Coralee saw changes in Ashley’s behaviour. She became “disruptive and disobedient.” By the time Ashley was fifteen she was in and out of youth court fourteen times for various minor offenses, changed schools twice, seen by a psychologist, who found no evidence of mental illness, and attended to by a youth care worker among other things. From April to October of 2003, she is sent to the New Brunswick Youth Centre various times. On October 21, 2003, Ashley and a group of other youth throw crab apples at a postal worker while on probation from her last visit to youth centre. She is sent to a Miramichi juvenile detention centre.

Her first day at the New Brunswick Youth Center for a long-term stay, she was sent to the therapeutic quiet time cell because she would not take her clothes off for the strip search. An inmate in the cell next to her describes Ashley as “scared because [the Corrections Canada officers] did not explain anything to her, so she refused to do it” (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 2010). Ashley spent twenty-three hours a day in this therapeutic quiet time cell, which she often referred to as ‘the hole.’ There were eight hundred documented incidents recorded involving Ashley while in Corrections Canada’s care.

Eventually Corrections Canada decided there was no other choice but to restrain Ashley, even though she had a mental illness. Officers strapped Ashley into a cocoon-like device nicknamed ‘the wrap’ which restricted her movements. As well, officers would often use tasers to control her behaviour. Ashley had not been given a psychological assessment during her incarceration. She was transferred multiple times across the country to various federal institutions. Her 30 day sentence had stretched to almost four years. Officers were finally instructed, under threat of dismissal, not to intervene if Ashley was harming herself until she stopped breathing. Finally, Ashley had enough and while at Grand Valley Institution in Kitchener, Ontario, Ashley choked herself to death with a strip of cloth, while seven officers were watching through the door (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 2010; Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 2010).

What have prisons evolved into? Since Ashley’s death, as of 2010, seventeen other inmates have committed suicide while in federal custody (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 2010). The case of Ashley Smith brings some interesting answers to this question and brings forth an even greater one: Is this case a one-off or the way things are in our federal prisons? Does Corrections Canada have what it takes to deal with mentally-ill prisoners? Is Corrections Canada doing anything to stop this from happening to the other ‘Ashley Smiths’ still in federal custody? Look right at the wording of our prison system. Almost all facilities include some form of the word ‘corrections’ in their title. Correct, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, means: “To set right, amend (a thing); to substitute what is right for the errors or faults in (a writing, etc.)” (Oxford University Press, 2012). If correction means to set something right, should that not be what we are doing in our ‘correctional’ facilities? Instead, many inmates are treated with disrespect and violently abused by the system which is supposed to correct them. Sometimes, those with mental health issues have it worse than other inmates. “People are sent to prison as a punishment by the court. The prison is not supposed to add pain to that punishment” (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 2010).

Ashley’s case also brings forth this question: what are prisons for? Many would say prisons are for rehabilitation. This cannot be true in many cases since rehabilitation is just another word for correction, which we have already seen is faulty for the conduct in many prisons. Some would say that prisons are a means for the government to make money. By continuing to build prisons, the government can gain finances from the inmates. However, the federal government has not built a new prison since 2006 and has no intention of building any new prisons, so this cannot be true (Government of Canada, 2012). Perhaps prisons exist to make society feel safe. After all, we have many dangerous criminals locked in prisons where they cannot touch innocent lives. But even with all these prisons and criminals in prisons, there are still many criminals on the streets harming innocent life and more people are becoming criminals each day. This even brings into question what constitutes a criminal. Does someone have to commit a murder before they are labeled a criminal, or does breaking any crime give the perpetrator a criminal name? If any crime counts as a criminal act, we would need a lot more prisons for the amount of people that jaywalk or drive over the speed limit. So if prisons are not there to make society feel safe, what are prisons for? I personally have no idea what prisons are for. It is scary to think that the inmates in our prison system are locked away in a building that we have no idea what it is even there for. Ashley Smith’s case brings forth many questions, most unanswered. She did not deserve to die. Ashley was just an innocent girl who was misunderstood by the system and eventually “…they took her life” (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 2010).