Blue plaid pyjama pants, three pairs of socks, four pairs of underwear, jeans, a few hoodies, sweatpants, one bottle of Pert shampoo, hair mousse, vanilla body wash, a copy of Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul, a plush pink pig, a SpongeBob SquarePants address book, a Walkman, headphones, one colouring book and a rhyming dictionary.
The duffle bag was light but she had no reason to think she’d be there three years.
At age 15, she had no reason to think she would spend most days and nights inside an often filthy, sometimes ant-ridden 9-by-6-foot segregation cell where the lights didn’t go off at bed time. She had no reason to think the pink pig would be taken away. But stuffed animals aren’t allowed in solitary confinement.
The full story of what happened to Ashley at the New Brunswick Youth Centre has never been told. The teen landed there after chucking crabapples at a Moncton mail carrier while she was on probation for a string of other nuisance-related offences.
The Toronto Star obtained copies of Ashley’s youth jail records from this time — a file that exceeds 900 pages, including heartbreaking handwritten notes she sent to prison staff, her family and a newspaper; discipline reports; and intergovernmental emails that discussed bringing adult criminal charges against her for offences she committed in the jail. That file documents Ashley’s coming of age behind bars before the superintendent of the New Brunswick Youth Centre had the teen punted prematurely to the adult system.
A coroner’s inquest, finally underway in Toronto six years after Ashley died on the floor of a Kitchener prison cell, will not drill down into her youth jail time and its effect on her mental health.
There’s simply too much ground to cover in the adult system. The jury will begin hearing its third week of evidence on Monday. More than 100 witnesses are expected to testify because Ashley was shuttled between institutions across the country 17 times in a year as an “adult” inmate.
Government reports issued post mortem addressed Ashley’s time in youth custody focusing on the jail’s use of segregation to deal with her.
But there was so much more.
Nov. 2, 2005
“Dear Editor: I’m writing this letter because I believe the community should know. I’m currently at the New Brunswick Youth Centre serving a rather long sentence for petty crimes. When the judge sentenced me, the community went way to go! One less troublemaker on the streets. Do they not realize this place makes youth worse not better? Since I have been here, I’ve become a more angry person. I have learned way more about how to commit crimes and not get caught….”
Ashley Smith, 17
After nearly two years of incarceration, Ashley wrote this note to the Times and Transcript, a newspaper in Moncton.
Records from a youth advocate’s site visit state she had been held in solitary confinement — which the centre calls Therapeutic Quiet — for a single stretch of “20 days or more” at least once.
“From what you and others have told me, she should not have been sent to NBYC,” the brief report states. “She is there to be assessed? Please help me to see where I can help with getting this youth out of our facility and into a place where her needs can be met.” It’s unclear who is asking for help and who is expected to help.
That was May 14, 2003. The New Brunswick Youth Centre’s policy declared that no young person would be segregated for more than five days at a time without the regional director’s permission. It’s not known whether such permission was sought or granted.
A youth jail form shows Ashley was segregated 24 times. Whether this was over the course of a week, a month or a year is unknown. What is known is that other youth were rarely sent there twice in that period.
Bernard Richard, New Brunswick’s former ombudsman and youth advocate, reported that Ashley served two-thirds of her youth custody time in segregation as punishment for bad behaviour: talking out of turn, not following orders, foul language. Staff laid 501 institutional disciplinary charges against her in three years and she was found guilty every time by NBYC’s internal court.
But the more Ashley was segregated — confined to her cell 23 hours a day — the more she seemed to act out. The documents suggest she was punished even when there was a reasonable explanation for her behaviour.
A NBYC program meeting report from December 2004 notes that Ashley “became very belligerent and disrespectful when (name blacked out) said she was going to Male 3 (an all-boys unit).”
“I don’t want to be with the guys,” she told a youth worker from the advocate’s office. “They’d have each other, I’d have no one. . . . And how could I use the washroom without someone looking through the window at me.”
When she was admitted, the clothing she brought was replaced by standard-issue socks, T-shirts and pants that she frequently tore up and was made to pay for. Damaging shorts cost her $10. It was $17 for every sweatshirt, $1.70 for socks, $12.31 for every bed sheet. Hundreds of dollars were deducted from her jail account to pay for these items.
While Ashley used some of the ripped material to create ligatures, which she would tie around her neck and other body parts to cut off her blood supply and provoke guards to interact with her; other clothing may have torn because it was just too small — at 5-feet-8 and 260 pounds, elements of the institutional uniform were not always available in her size.
“Can I please talk to you about getting two large pair of panties,” Ashley wrote to her unit manager on Sept. 17, 2005. “(Name blacked out) wore mine and (name blacked out) gave me two new pair but they are way too small! Thanks.”
Two days later, the unit manager wrote back. “Ashley, you may request these items from the staff on the female unit. Should be able to work with you on this issue.”
A month later, Ashley inquired again. “Can you please do something about the small girls on female wearing big clothes when they know there is none for me and I’m stuck with small clothes! Thanks.”
An incredible amount of Ashley’s communication with her keepers happened over paper and pen, or sometimes crayon when she lost her Bic pen privileges because of her behaviour.
At times she seemed to revel in correspondence even though she would often wait days and sometimes weeks for a response to her inquiries. Almost every note included please and thank you. Some memos were adorned with smiley faces or exclamation marks, with exuberant hearts standing in for the dots.
Replies were rarely as congenial. Ashley’s mother, Coralee Smith, advised her in a 2005 letter that “you get better results with honey as bait than with vinegar,” and there were times when Ashley excelled at being good.
She advocated on behalf of other inmates, asking for fruit and vegetables as snacks instead of muffins (request denied), new communal headphones to replace broken ones (request granted) and newspapers for the female units on the weekend (request to be considered).
She asked the program manager if she could be considered for a house manager position but she was rejected “due to negative behaviour.” Undiscouraged, Smith asked for a ping-pong table for the female unit to “help pass time during the Christmas holidays.” It’s not known whether she got it.
The positivity that Ashley mustered wasn’t enough to keep her from segregation or criminal charges, which added time to her sentence.
From Feb. 23, 2004, until Sept. 19, 2006, staff called Miramichi police into the facility to lay formal external charges against Ashley on 24 occasions. The offences ranged from assaulting correctional officers, which included spitting or throwing toilet water, and activating sprinklers.
Because of these charges, what was originally a month-long sentence in youth jail had, over the years, ballooned into a term of six years, one month and 17 days.
On July 29, 2006, the Superintendent of the New Brunswick Youth Centre filed an application with the court to have her transferred to federal custody even though she was still a youth. The law allows such a transfer if it is considered to be in the best interest of the youth or public.
The prospect of adult custody terrified her.
A few months earlier, she wrote to an official within the institution promising to be a better inmate.
“I’m writting (sic) this letter because I was and still am … trying to get back on track. At shift change tonight I covered my cell window because I was upset. . . At ten o’clock this evening the (unit manager) came over and told me as per you I was moving to T.Q. (therapeutic quiet). I’m very upset that I’m down here. The boys are always rude and the limited time out of my cell is hard. I came down tonight without a struggle because I know things will be better for me . . . I honestly want to get back on track and go back to school.”
Ashley’s family challenged the transfer. Their appeal was denied.
On Oct. 5, 2006, Ashley arrived at Saint John Regional Correctional Centre, a provincial adult jail, where she was Tasered twice within the first few weeks.
On Oct. 31, 2006, she entered the federal system. She was dead within a year.
Original Article
Source: the star
Author: Diana Zlomislic
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