Introduction: Law, Vulnerability, and Segregation: What Have We Learned from Ashley Smith's Carceral Death?

Introduction

Ashley Smith's 2007 carceral death encountered widespread media attention. As time passed and the news cycle moved on to other fascinations, the details of her case started to fade from public discussion. As 2017 marks the ten-year anniversary of Smith's death, we felt it was time to re-examine and reflect upon different facets of the case. In the interests of clarity and for ease of reference, in the following pages we present a summary of some of the commonly understood and widely accepted facts of the case. Some of these commonly accepted "truths" are not unproblematic, as is discussed throughout the various entries in this special issue. We present these "facts of the case" to help ground the analyses and critiques presented in the manuscripts offered in this issue.¹

Case Summary

Ashley Smith was a middle class, white, Canadian teen girl who died from self-strangulation in an adult federal prison on October 19, 2007, at the age of nineteen. Smith was born January 29, 1988, in the province of New Brunswick and was adopted at five days old. It is widely reported that she experienced a "normal" childhood in Moncton, New Brunswick. During her early adolescence, Ashley started to get into trouble with various authorities and questions were raised about her mental health. Smith's parents report that at age thirteen or fourteen they saw distinct behavioural changes in their daughter. By age fifteen she had been before juvenile court fourteen times for various minor offences such as trespassing and causing a disturbance. In March 2002, Smith was assessed by a psychologist, who found no evidence of mental illness. However, her behavioural problems continued and she was suspended from school numerous times during the fall of 2002. In March 2003, after a series of court appearances, Ashley was admitted to the Pierre Caissie Centre, a mental health centre, for assessment. She was diagnosed with various mental conditions, including "ADHD [(attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder)], learning disorder, borderline personality disorder and narcissistic personality traits" and was discharged early for unruly and disruptive behaviour.²

Ashley was first incarcerated as a youth at age fifteen, in 2003. She was initially sent to custody for a single offence, throwing crabapples at a postal carrier. There is no indication that anyone was injured by this act, but as her target was an agent of the state, the incident was taken very seriously. While Ashley had been in trouble for minor things before, like disobeying teachers and stealing a CD, she had never spent time in custody. Her initial sentence for this offence was a period of one month in youth custody; during this sentence, she was quickly isolated in solitary confinement—misleadingly labelled by youth corrections as "therapeutic quiet time"—for what correctional officers determined to be disruptive behaviour on her first day in custody. While Smith's original sentence was a short one, as a result of the accumulation of hundreds of further convictions arising from disciplinary incidents, including those she received for self-harming, she remained in youth custody for three years.

In January 2006, Ashley Smith turned eighteen. On the same day, a motion was made under the Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA) by the Crown to transfer her to an adult facility. Smith retained a lawyer to fight the transfer, but was unsuccessful. On October 5, Smith was transferred to an adult federal prison—Nova Institution for Women, in Truro, Nova Scotia—where she spent the vast majority of her time in administrative segregation. The Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) differentiates administrative segregation (used to monitor prisoners deemed at risk of suicide or who engage in self-injurious behaviour) from disciplinary segregation (used as a form of punishment for institutional rule infractions), but this is a difference of status rather than the material conditions of confinement, as the cells and the types of deprivation prisoners experience are the same. These small cells include a metal cot, a thin suicide mattress and blanket (i.e...