Inmates ask court to keep women's prison open
February 28, 2007
Canadian Press

Inmates at the country's only minimum-security women's prison are asking the courts to block the Correctional Service of Canada's plan to close the facility.

Four women filed an application Tuesday in the Superior Court in Kingston, Ont., seeking an injunction that would prevent Corrections from transferring them out of Isabel McNeill House, effectively preventing the prison service from closing the facility.

“One of the applicants has been living in a residential setting for coming up to five years and they're proposing to throw her behind razor wire fences at [Grand Valley Institution] with much higher security provisions that simply aren't necessary for these women.”

“We say it's a breach of their constitutional rights on many fronts,” she said.

“The court challenge is acknowledged by CSC and we will be addressing it in court,” said spokeswoman Diane Russon.

Corrections announced last Monday that it will close McNeill House saying it is too expensive to operate. The prison service says it's costing $918,000 a year to run the century-old limestone facility and that it now needs costly renovations.

It can hold 10 women in a low-security, residential setting without any perimeter security and currently holds four.

An expert panel appointed by Corrections Canada to review women's corrections praised McNeill House in a report released last week.

The panel noted it is expensive to operate and it is unlikely Corrections can secure funding from Ottawa to build new minimum-security facilities in urban areas close to the home communities of female offenders.

Canada's only minimum-security women's prison to close
February 20, 2007
CBC News

Canada's only federal facility for low-risk female offenders will be closing, the government announced the same day a report praising the facility was released.

The Correctional Service of Canada will shut down Isabel McNeill House in Kingston, Ont., the government said Monday.

Diane Russon, an Ontario spokeswoman for the department, said the inmates will be transferred to other facilities by the end of March because Isabel McNeill House is no longer financially viable. Russon said the number of inmates has dwindled since the Prison for Women across the street closed down in 2000. There are now only four in a facility designed to hold 10.

Isabel McNeill House opened in 1990 in a historic limestone building in Kingston as an offshoot of the Grand Valley Institution for Women in Kitchener, Ont. It has been providing residents with employment training and community programs to help in their transition into society.

Moving Forward with Women's Corrections: Ten-Year Status Report on Women's Corrections 1996-2006 says: "The level of interaction, innovation and support there [Isabel McNeill] is certainly impressive, as is the commitment to progress on the part of the staff."

The report also urged the federal department to decide quickly on the fate of the facility.

Russon said the inmates will be moved to higher-security facilities that have programs geared to minimum-security prisoners.

"In all the facilities, there's minimum-security women and they're getting the same access to the community, the same rights and privileges as any minimum-security offender across Canada," she said.

But Isabel McNeill inmate Ludmila Ilina, 67, worries she won't be able to establish the same links with the community when she moves back to the medium-security prison in Kitchener, where she has already served time.

Ilina, who spoke to the CBC while hemming a piece of material for a quilt, said she spends a lot of time in the finished basement of Isabel McNeill House, making items for donation to charity.

"People feel that they participate in the life outside, to be ready for reintegration," she said.

Kim Pate is spokeswoman for a society that assists and acts as an advocate for female prisoners.

She said she believes minimum-security offenders in medium-security facilities don't have the same access to the community as Isabel McNeill House residents.

"They're living in essentially medium security so are treated much the same," said Pate, executive director of the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies in Ottawa.

The expert panel report recommends that funds previously used to run Isabel McNeill House be dedicated to orient new inmates at regional facilities across the country.

It also recommends that Isabel McNeil be used as a model for any future minimum-security women's prison, and says such a facility would ideally be in a large urban area