Solitary confinement is a national disgrace.

• Author: Davison, Charles

I have been privileged to visit Fort McPherson, in the Northwest Territories, a number of times since 2011. It is a pleasant little Gwich'in community located on the banks of the Peele River southwest of Inuvik, within sight of the Richardson Mountains to the west. It is one of the few remote northern communities connected to the rest of Canada by road: the Dempster Highway. The Dempster name conjures up what is probably the settlement's best known historical event, for it was from here that Cpl. Norman Dempster left in 1911 to find the R.C.M.P.'s "Lost Patrol" which had disappeared a year earlier. The recovered bodies of the four officers now rest in the little graveyard next to the Anglican Church.

Now, another citizen of Fort McPherson is in the news, albeit for very different, if also equally tragic, reasons. Thanks to Patrick White and the Globe and Mail, Canadians have been made aware of the sad story of Eddie Snowshoe, a young aboriginal man who ended up imprisoned in southern Canadian penitentiaries, and who ultimately hung himself in Edmonton Institution in 2010. Mr. White's expose, "Who Killed Eddie Snowshoe: the fatal sentence of solitary confinement [2]" (Globe and Mail, December 5, 2014), highlights various failings of our federal correctional system, including our continuing use of solitary confinement in our penitentiaries. This article should be mandatory reading for all Canadians, for it is in our name that our correctional system acts, and responds--or fails to respond--to the needs of our fellow citizens imprisoned within it.

Eddie Snowshoe is a male counterpart to Ashley Smith, the young woman who committed suicide in a Kitchener penitentiary in 2007, as correctional officers stood and watched. In Mr. Snowshoe's case, correctional staff did not stand and watch; indeed, when they discovered his body they did all they could to revive him, but it was by then too late. But his penitentiary history, and that of Ms. Smith, are remarkably similar: both spent inordinate periods in solitary confinement (a total of 2,000 days for Ms. Smith; in Mr. Snowshoe's case, 162 consecutive days ending when he killed himself. Both showed increasingly serious signs of mental illness and instability; and both had histories of self-harm and attempts at suicide while imprisoned.

Almost 20 years ago, calls began for a "cap" of 60 days in long-term segregation due to its mental health impacts. A year after the death of Ashley Smith, the...