Wellness Within Supports CPSBC's New Standard of Practice on Care for Incarcerated Patients
The College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia (CPSBC) recently published a new practice standard for physicians who provide care to incarcerated patients that lays out expectations for physicians working in corrections to minimize negative health impacts related to solitary confinement. The standards are drawn from the United Nations Mandela Rules (the Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners). CPSBC highlights research demonstrating the severe impacts isolation can have on patients’ mental health. The standard of practice adopts prohibitions outlined in the Mandela Rules, including a ban on the use of isolation for people with existing mental illness and people experiencing the mental health impacts of isolation. The standards also limit the maximum extent of solitary confinement for any person to 15 days.
Brent Crane, whose complaint through Prisoners’ Legal Services (PLS) initiated this standard of practice, said, “Segregation was really hard on my mental health. I am glad that physicians will have to be aware of how harmful segregation is. I hope this practice standard will prevent other people from suffering the way I did in isolation.”
Wellness Within commends CPSBC for developing this essential standard, the first of its kind in Canada, and calls on other medical colleges, including colleges of physicians and nurses, to adopt similar position statements. While this is an important step forward, Wellness Within believes that administrative segregation violates sections of the Charters of Rights and Freedoms, and we call for the abolishment of administrative segregation (solitary confinement), especially for pregnant people in Canadian correctional facilities.
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.
Contact: Martha Paynter, Director of Research, (902) 292-7082 or martha.paynter@unb.ca