The inside of a cell is seen during a media tour of renovations at the Central Nova Scotia Penitentiary in Halifax on Tuesday, May 15, 2018. The federal government says it will abolish the controversial practice of restricting detainees to dry cells when they are in solitary confinement. smuggling into their bays. THE CANADIAN PRESS / Andrew Vaughan The federal government has said it will ban a controversial form of incarceration for detainees suspected of smuggling in, but critics say the government should reconsider the practice for all. Dry cells are essentially a type of isolation where inmates suspected of smuggling into their bodies are subject to 24-hour light and surveillance and denied access to running water. The idea is that they will eventually go through whatever substance they may be hiding so that the authorities can recover it. The federal prison guard, prison investigator Ivan Zinger, described the conditions of the dry cell confinement as “far from the most humiliating, harsh and restrictive imaginable in federal corrections”. Former federal inmate Lisa Adams has filed a lawsuit against the practice after undergoing dry cell confinement for more than two weeks in 2020 when she was suspected of carrying crystalline methamphetamine into her vagina. After 15 days alone, but under constant surveillance, a pelvic exam revealed that she was not hiding anything in her body. The Nova Scotia High Court has ruled that the practice is illegal, as an inmate suspected of hiding something in his vagina could be locked in a dry cell indefinitely. “The predominantly involuntary menstrual process through which bodily fluids or waste (including smuggling) can be excreted through the vagina is less common than through the digestive system. As a result, women may experience longer periods of dry retention. “When there is a reasonable suspicion of smuggling into the bay – as was the case with Ms Adams,” Judge John Keith said in his ruling. The Crown in the case simply proposed a change in the wording of the law to exclude those suspected of concealing material inside them, but Keith said this would be an oversimplification and gave the government six months to reconsider its policy as a whole. This deadline expires in May. In a budget introduced last Thursday, the federal government said it would amend the law on corrections and conditional release to ban the use of dry cells for those suspected of hiding smuggling into their vaginal cavities. The paper makes no reference to the complete abolition of the controversial practice of dry cells. The budget announcement came as a surprise to Emilie Coyle, executive director of the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies. She said she was disappointed that the government did not seem to be reviewing the practice for all detainees. “It’s particularly outrageous for people who have vaginas because they can be dry cell for an indefinite period of time. But the practice of dry cell is an overall harmful practice,” Coyle said in an interview Monday. “It’s a really, really torturous way to try to extract suspected smuggling.” It’s hard to know how common the practice is, Coyle added. Current and former prison investigators have repeatedly called on the federal government to set limits on the practice. In his 2020 annual report, Zinger reissued a nearly decade-long recommendation banning detainees from being held in dry cells for more than 72 hours. “In my opinion, beyond 72 hours there can be no further reason or justification for detaining or detaining a person in such deprivation conditions,” he wrote in his report. “After three days, this process certainly becomes irrational, if not severely punitive.” The Canadian Penitentiary Service has once again rejected the recommendation because “it is more than possible to delay defecation for more than 72 hours”, and some people do not urinate more than once or twice a week. Detainees are always provided with bedding, food, clothing and toiletries, as well as reasonable access to medical, spiritual and psychological assistance, the penitentiary said in its response to the recommendation. The agency said it would consider other safeguards and oversight measures for the use of dry cells.
