Prisoners not safe from guard harassment when seeking health care
HALIFAX – There is further evidence that people who are incarcerated can expect to be regularly subjected to sexual harassment, racist comments, and breaches of privacy, after an adjudicator decided in favour of a prison guard who participated in harassment and other inappropriate behaviour while accompanying a prisoner to the hospital.
According to the evidence provided in the hearing, the guard sexually harassed hospital staff, made inappropriate comments about and breached the privacy of prisoners, and failed to intervene when a colleague made racist comments about a prisoner. Despite these egregious actions, the adjudicator ruled that the guard “was more of a passive participant” calling the guards actions “relatively minor and fleeting.”
“Prisoners have almost no recourse to raise complaints about harassment, confidentiality breaches, or other inappropriate conduct by guards, but this decision shows that even when other staff raise concerns about these behaviours, they are dismissed,” said Martha Paynter, Research Director for Wellness Within. “There’s no way around the fact that prisons expose people who are incarcerated and staff to violence and harassment.”
The adjudicator overturned the firing of the guard, ruling that a three month suspension without pay was “severe enough to send a message to correctional staff (and the grievor) that Correctional Officers must take care always to act in a professional manner when in public or when dealing with or speaking in the presence of inmates, other staff or the public.”
“Prisoners have higher health needs than the general population, and they are forced to be accompanied to their health appointments by correctional officers. Normalizing and accepting harassment, racist comments, and breaches of confidentiality, in fact, sends the message that prisoners should expect to experience these types of risk even when they are able to access care,” said Paynter.
Wellness Within is a volunteer-based registered non-profit organization that serves women, transgender, and nonbinary people who have experienced criminalization and are pregnant or have young children in Nova Scotia, part of the unceded and unsurrendered ancestral territory of the Mi'kmaq people. Wellness Within supports people through the full spectrum of reproductive health experience; facilitates workshops and education sessions; develops resource materials; and advocates for reproductive justice issues.
Wellness Within demands the appointment of an independent Office to monitor the conditions of confinement in provincial prisons in Nova Scotia and the conditions to which prisoners are subjected to when seeking care outside of these facilities.
Media Contact:
Martha Paynter, Director of Research, 9022927082, martha.paynter@gmail.com