A University of Toronto task force made helpful recommendations on mental health, but they didn’t address a key stigma underlying the controversial practice of handcuffing students seeking help, a professor says.

There was nothing “in the context of a criminalizing impact,” said Beverly Bain, a women and gender studies professor at the Mississauga campus.

The 2016 National College Health Assessment found that 61 per cent of 25,000 post-secondary Ontario students surveyed experienced feeling hopelessness in the previous year, nearly half “felt so depressed it was difficult to function” and 13.2 per cent seriously considered suicide.

Last week, the university accepted all of the recommendations by a 13-person task force consisting of students, faculty and staff that was convened in the spring of 2019.

The task force’s job became more urgent in the fall after a student in the Mississauga campus spoke publicly about her debilitating experience of being handcuffed by campus police — as part of protocol — when she sought help from the campus nurse for having suicidal thoughts. She was not intoxicated or agitated or holding any weapons at the time.

That student coming forward has led to several other students, primarily women of colour, “sharing their experiences of being handcuffed after seeking mental health support” on campus, according to an open letter signed by at least a dozen faculty to the university president and senior leaders in November.

“As faculty and staff, we are trained to refer students to services … now we have to seriously consider whether such a referral could lead to further harm,” they wrote.

They’re not alone in their concerns. In his 2014 review of Toronto Police Service policies and practices following the fatal shooting of 18-year-old Sammy Yatim, Justice Frank Iacobucci urged police to “identify exceptions to TPS requirements such as handcuffing … in recognition that the apprehension of a person in crisis under the Mental Health Act differs from other types of police apprehensions.”

In its report, the University of Toronto task force said, “We recommend this practice (of handcuffing) be reviewed by the university and that a trauma-informed protocol … in their evaluation of the safety and risk of the student … be developed.”

It’s true that handcuffing traumatizes already struggling students, but that isn’t all of it. Handcuffing isn’t just about health or support or safety.

Steel handcuffs are universally associated with criminality.

On TV shows, they’re usually produced when the bad guys are caught and being read their rights. They’re seen as a necessary restraint to protect society. In reality, handcuffs can be misused to protect institutions and even police themselves from liability.

Writing in the Journal of Canadian Family Physician, three professors who work in university health care settings said even “sympathetic officers believe that they will not benefit from institutional support if they do not physically restrain patients during transfer and a negative outcome occurs.”

Handcuffs can also be selectively used on already marginalized people.

In an appalling incident at a Vancouver BMO bank in December, police handcuffed and arrested Maxwell Johnson and his 12-year-old granddaughter when they went to open a bank account and were deemed suspicious. Add to that, Johnson, whom the Heiltsuk First Nation said, is a “much-loved and respected artist, carver, cultural leader, singer, foster parent, and knowledge holder in our community,” suffers from anxiety and panic disorder.

In 2016, a 6-year-old Black child was shackled — hands and feet — in her Peel district school, for the sin of kicking and punching, according to police, who said the handcuffing was in the interest of “safety of other students and, ultimately, the child.” The child had no known developmental issues, her mother told media.

Kola Illuyomade, an outspoken advocate for Black parents’ rights in Peel, referenced this case at the board’s public meeting last week and said: “Police are not social workers, but they are in our business from kindergarten to secondary school.”

The symbolism of handcuffs carries such power that it instantly transforms wearers into wrongdoers, presenting them as capable of such violence, such danger that those in authority deem it necessary to unleash on them the strongest form of public restraint.

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“There’s a history of police intervention in mental illness of people of colour that have ended in death,” said Bain. “We do not believe any form of police is capable of handling a situation that requires a certain kind of support, which calls for expertise in mental health issues and how to calm people from their current situation.

“The very presence of police in uniform and doubling down with handcuffs is not a de-escalation, if anything it’s an escalation. You’re now seen as a threat in need to be constrained. It’s a carceral intervention.”

Seen through the lens of criminality, the university cannot merely review handcuffing symptomatically, but consider the larger structural issue of whether police — campus police or municipal ones — should be involved in mental health intervention at all.