VANCOUVER—When a country’s treatment of prisoners runs afoul of an international law officially dubbed “the Nelson Mandela Rule” — after the South African leader imprisoned for 27 years — it raises troubling questions, a Vancouver-based rights group argued Tuesday.

So when the B.C. Supreme Court struck down Canada’s practice of holding thousands of its prisoners in solitary confinement for purely administrative, not disciplinary, reasons, it ruled Ottawa had breached not only its Charter rights, but also the UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners.

“That’s the international standard for the treatment of prisoners,” Jay Aubrey, litigation counsel for the BC Civil Liberties Association, said in an interview Tuesday. “It’s basically the minimum standard by which anyone can treat prisoners without it being considered ‘torture.’

“Yet somehow we continue to ignore the agreement, which Canada signed on to.”

The BCCLA launched a constitutional challenge to the widespread practice of administrative detention, or solitary, in Canadian prisons in early 2015, with the prisoner welfare group the John Howard Society of Canada.

The B.C. Supreme Court, in a landmark ruling this January, declared the practice a violation of prisoners’ Charter rights, particularly because of segregation’s disproportionate impact on Indigenous inmates and well-documented harm to their mental health.

But on Feb. 16, Canada’s attorney general appealed the historic ruling, which ordered Ottawa to draft new legislation governing administrative segregation within a year.

In a May 17 appeal filing, the government argued the practice is “integral to the difficult task” of managing large inmate populations, and ensuring the safety of inmates and guards, who in recent years have raised concerns about growing risks they face in overcrowded jails.

Ottawa argued B.C. Supreme Court Justice Peter Leask “failed to recognize and give due consideration” to the benefits of the practice in separating rival gang members, responding to inmates with “poor anger management,” and protecting staff from violence.

The government also argued Indigenous inmates are overrepresented in solitary confinement not because of discrimination, but “due to social history factors, Aboriginal inmates tend to be more involved in violence and gangs, are disproportionately involved in security incidents, and thus more likely to be placed in administrative segregation.”

The lawsuit challenged a type of solitary confinement called administrative segregation, which the Correctional Service of Canada defines on its website as separating a prisoner “to prevent association with other inmates” in instances that aren’t the result of a CSC disciplinary decision.

That sets it apart from disciplinary segregation, in which a prisoner is thrown in “the hole” for breaking prison rules — in the latter cases, inmates are allowed legal counsel and there is oversight.

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“Administrative segregation,” wrote Leask on Jan. 17, “is a form of solitary confinement that places all Canadian federal inmates subject to it at significant risk of serious psychological harm, including mental pain and suffering, and increased incidence of self-harm and suicide.”

Correction — June 19, 2018: This article was edited from a previous version that mistakenly said the federal government launched its appeal this week. In fact, it appealed on Feb. 16.

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