Fact Sheet: Alternatives to Incarceration

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• 1992-93 Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics indicate that Canada imprisons its population at the rate of 154 per 100,000 adults and 223 per 100,000 youth; we are now second only to the United States when it comes to the incarceral rates of the industrialized world
  
  
• 1993 Corrections figures indicate that women make up 2.2% Canada's federally sentenced population
  
  
• 1993 Corrections figures indicate that the annual cost of incarcerating each federally sentenced woman at the Prison for Women (P4W) is approximately $92,000, an amount that is more than four times a woman's average annual income
  
  
• Canadian prisons cost us between 1.5 to 2 billion dollars annually to maintain
  
  
• First Nations peoples are 6 times more likely to go to prison than is the majority of the non-Aboriginal population of Canada
  
  
• although First Nations women make up only 3% of Canada's population, they represent approximately 17% of federally sentenced women
  
  
• 2/3 of women imprisoned at P4W have children; most were the primary, usually sole, caregivers for their children prior to their incarceration; too many of these children also end up in state care as a result of the imprisonment of their mothers
  
  
• 1993 National Council of Welfare figures reveal that the proportion of poor children living with single-parent mothers has grown substantially in recent years; in 1980, the figure was 33%; in 1993, 42% of poor children lived with single-parent mothers
  
  
• current approaches to addressing crime by increasing prohibitions and developing ever more punitive penalties are increasing the nature and extent of imprisonment in Canada
  
  
• the unravelling of social programs and therefore basic support services for women in Canada, combined with increases in penalties and imprisonment are not resulting in any increased safety or equality for Canadian women and children; we have not seen decreases in crime, but are seeing increased public insecurity and corresponding fears and safety concerns
  
  
• imprisonment is expensive: the cost of maintaining a person in prison varies from $80 to $200 a day, while the cost of alternatives like probation, bail supervision and community supervision work orders is $5 to $20 a day
  
  
• ours is a retributive criminal justice system where, increasingly, our focus is on identifying someone to blame and then punish for legal transgressions; little effort tends to be devoted to identifying, much less addressing, the needs and/or losses of either the "victim", the "offender", or the community
  
  
• recidivism rates for federally sentenced women are approximately, 20%, only 10% of which reflect the commission of new offences, the remaining 10% reflects administrative breaches or conditions of community release
  
  
• most of the women who are imprisoned are not high risk and do not pose a threat to community safety
  
  
• imprisonment, especially for long periods, has not succeeded in deterring or rehabilitating prisoners
  
  
• there is far greater likelihood that opportunities for responsible accounting for offences committed may occur in community-based and client-centred setting
  
  
• 75% of women at P4W have basic education (junior high level) or below; 40% have been classified as functionally illiterate
  
  
• compared to the programs available for men in prison, women in prison experience greater limitations in terms of access to university level education, as well as vocational programs aimed at the development of marketable job skills
  
  
• 43% of federally sentenced women have substance abuse or addictions problems; 69% have indicated that drugs and/or alcohol played a major part in their offence and/or their offending history
  
  
• 82% of federally sentenced women and 72% of provincially sentenced women have experienced physical and/or sexual abuse
  
  
• only two prisons that incarcerate women in Canada provided programs for sexual abuse/incest survivors; support and therapeutic services and programs for women who have experienced violence are insufficient in prison, not to mention culturally inappropriate; prisons provide virtually no opportunities for First Nations women to heal
  
  
• 60.2% of all offences for which women at P4W (maximum security) were convicted in 1991, were non-violent, and included property and drug offences; 41% of women at P4W are first-time offenders and 50% had never been in prison before.
  
  
• in 1993, women were charged with approximately 11% of the violent crimes committed in Canada; 62% of these charges represented what are often referred to as low level or common assaults
  
  
• the commission of acts of predatory violence by women is very rare; most acts of violence committed by women tend to be reactive or defensive in nature, and are generally more reliant upon highly situational contexts versus the characteristics of individual women
  
  
• a common response to women's emotional reaction, particularly slashing, has been the use of segregation, a situation whereby prisoners are isolated from the general population, deprived of personal effects, and generally locked in their cells 23 hours a day; further, for those who are suicidal, they are also deprived of clothing and sheets
  
  
• other forms of punishment include institutional lock-down (everyone is locked in her cell and prisoner movement is ceased for the period of lock-down), as well as the cancellation of the few visits women may receive (many have been dislocated from their communities, so visits are not usually at a premium)
  
  
• particularly during times of high stress, self-injurious behaviour, especially slashing, is very prevalent amongst women in prison; slashing and other forms of self-injury are generally understood to be a means of release/relief from the distress of childhood sexual abuse
  
  
• 59% of women at P4W have disclosed self-injurious behaviour; increasingly, women express reluctance to such self-reporting, for fear of reprisal and segregation
  
  
• between December 1988 and the spring of 1992, 7 women suicided at P4W; 6 were First Nations women; the seventh was the first woman declared a dangerous offender and sentenced to an indeterminate sentence [in November 1994, a 21-year-old woman became the second woman