Wellness Within is alarmed by news that a woman who was released from remand custody at the New Brunswick Women’s Correctional Centre in Miramichi suffered a medical emergency while awaiting transportation and died the following day.
Incarceration has significant negative impacts on health and increases mortality rates. The risk of death is highest in the two weeks after release. A study completed in Ontario found individuals who spent any amount of time in custody had an overall reduced life expectancy by 4.2 years for men and 10.6 years for women.
Decarceration strategies and measures to address health care inequity experienced by incarcerated individuals are urgently needed to reduce preventable deaths.
Wellness Within calls for timely and public release of results of the Coroner Services investigation into her death. Our thoughts are with her family and all those affected by this tremendous loss, including her peers at the correctional centre.
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; partners with researchers to study how prison affects health; and advocates for reproductive justice.
Contact: Martha Paynter, Director of Research: martha.paynter@unb.ca or (902)292-7082. Natasha Hines, Chair: natasha_hines@outlook.com or (902)717-2956
