The federal government is trying to overturn a ruling by Ontario’s top court that spending more than 15 days in solitary confinement amounts to unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment.

In appealing that decision, Ottawa is choosing the wrong side of history. In 2011, the United Nations Special Rapporteur declared that anything beyond 15 days amounts to torture.

Ottawa should drop its appeal, and not only accept the new limit, but go further and impose even tighter restrictions to ensure fairer and more humane detention.

Politicians, policy makers and corrections officials often cloak solitary confinement in euphemisms. In Canada, it is called “administrative segregation” In the United States, for adults, it is “restrictive housing,” or “administrative segregation”; for children, it is “room confinement,” or “seclusion.”

Regardless, prisoners will call it what it is: the hole.

For the Ontario Court of Appeal, the distinguishing feature of solitary confinement is “the elimination of meaningful social interaction or stimulus.”

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When I worked as a public defender representing adults in criminal cases and children in juvenile delinquency proceedings in Washington, D.C., I saw firsthand how periods of isolation, as brief as hours long, can cause torment and suffering.

One of my clients, whom I’ll call Damien, aged 17, was a talented writer who aspired to be a music producer to help young people like himself translate their experiences into songs. At age 15, mistaken for someone else, he was shot in the leg. The trauma of that experience led to a host of symptoms: he experienced flashbacks, hypervigilance, paranoia, and panic attacks. He became my client when he was accused of stealing a winter coat.

A judge ordered that Damien be placed in a group home while awaiting trial. Separated from family, he had a panic attack and ran away. Once recaptured, he was confined to the Youth Services Center, D.C.’s jail for children.

The long hours each day alone in his cell worsened his symptoms. Over the two weeks that I visited him there, I saw his normally bright eyes go dull. Gone was the curious and inquisitive Damien I had first met, replaced by an anxious, withdrawn and increasingly depressed child. Looking down at the floor, he’d say to me, “I can’t take it anymore.”

In imposing the 15-day limit, the Ontario court made no distinction regarding the severity of offences. Future legislative approaches should similarly refrain from drawing a line between “violent” and “nonviolent” offenders. Such divisions legitimize and entrench abusive practices. They mask the overrepresentation of minorities in solitary confinement. And, for all people who endure solitary, they undermine their potential for rehabilitation.

There is evidence aplenty that solitary confinement causes suffering so severe it can push people to suicide. Coralee Cusack-Smith, in grieving the self-strangulation death of her teenage daughter, Ashley Smith, who had spent lengthy periods in solitary confinement in what the Correctional Service of Canada called the “Therapeutic Quiet Room,” said, “Ashley did not enter the prison system with mental health issues. She got sick inside, under its tutelage.”

Asked to consider prohibiting solitary confinement even for short periods for people aged 18 to 21, people with mental illness, and people isolated for their own protection, the Ontario court declined to do so.

But the federal government should do exactly that. Critical brain development continues through age 25. When put in isolation, young adults endure similar harms to children such as Damien. Even short periods of isolation can exacerbate the suffering of people who arrive in jail with untreated trauma and mental health issues, and people previously identified as being at increased risk of depression and self-harm.

As a public defender, I sought to ensure my incarcerated clients received the medications they required to regulate their moods and anxieties. The cruel reality is that anti-psychotic medication can be less effective for those in solitary confinement.

Ottawa should act to make solitary confinement a measure of last resort, used in rare circumstances for only the briefest periods to respond to an immediate threat of physical harm. Solitary confinement can be reduced without reducing safety. Because prisoners are denied social interaction and supportive services in solitary, upon return to the general population of the facility or release into the community, they are more likely to engage in misbehaviour.

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To appeal the Ontario court’s decision is to endorse further traumatizing prisoners. Instead, Ottawa should work to build their resilience. It should ensure they have access to counselling, health care, education and rehabilitative support services. It should equip staff with the skills to prevent and de-escalate conflict. Instead of using only the threat of punishment for bad behaviour, staff should rely on rewards and incentives for good behaviour.

In advocating for Damien, I demonstrated to the court the harmful effects of his confinement and the judge then ordered his release into the community. Connecting Damien to supportive services so that his trauma could be treated should have happened in the first place.

In appealing, Ottawa is keeping too many people in solitary confinement for too long, who, unlike Damien, remain invisible to us on the outside.