Honourable senators, I rise to commemorate two events today: one a very sad and preventable one; one a great celebration — the celebration of women’s equality.

It was 10 years ago that Ashley Smith died alone, naked but for a suicide “gown,” in segregation at the prison for women in Kingston. For those of you who don’t know her story, she was initially taken into custody at the age of 15 for breach of probation for throwing crab apples at a postal worker. Throughout the next four years she was criminally charged and sentenced to increasingly harsh conditions resulting in her transfer to an adult prison at the age of 18. By the time of her death, which was ruled a homicide by the jury that conducted the inquest into her death, Ashley had been tasered, shackled, forcibly drugged, transferred 17 times and segregated throughout 11 and a half months in federal custody.

She accumulated many criminal charges due to her responses to the correctional treatment of a young woman whom Corrections Service Canada refused to see as having mental health issues.

In the early hours of October 19, 2007, Ashley died in her segregated prison cell as guards looked on.

The anniversary of Ashley’s preventable death is a stark reminder of the continuing need to address the irreversible impact of segregation and other forms of solitary confinement. Current proposed changes to the Corrections and Conditional Release Act signal a partial recognition of the devastating effect of segregation, but they are not enough. Canada must join worldwide calls to end the use of segregation and decarcerate those with disabling mental health issues. Immediate action is required to prevent further tragedies and travesties. What happened to Ashley should never have happened. Her story reminds us of the incompatibility of mental illness and punishment and that prisons are not treatment centres.

Honourable senators, I ask that we work together to correct the ongoing injustices experienced by young women like Ashley. We owe it to her memory, to her family and to all women before and since who face the kind of inhumane conditions to which she was subjected to decarcerate and demand the elimination of all forms of segregation and solitary confinement.