After death deemed homicide, Ashley Smith family calls for new criminal investigation

This whole sequence of events continues to baffle me:

- that a child could be jailed for throwing crabapples at a mailman

- that said jail sentance would be extended beyond all proportionality to the offence based on 'bad behaviour'

- that Corrections Canada recognized they were dealing with a severe mental health issue, yet refused to deal with her on any basis other than a discipline issue

- that even with all of the above failures, they would spend the untold amoutn of money and useless effort to shuttle her back and forth across canada to 17 different facilities.

Everyone from the judge who initially sentenced her to the various Corrections officials across Canada who dealt with her (or her file) should all be disciplinned or fired.

You're too quick to judge when you don't have all the facts.

Do you think that police and guards just opted to wear riot gear around her just because she was a chronic apple thrower?

This demonstrates a gaping hole in mental health care in Canada. Smith should have been treated in a secure medical facility, not prison. What I didn`t agree with in the findings was prisoner`s well being should trump the personal safety of correctional officers. Never

Mental facilities don't have the means to handle a violent inmate like Smith unless heavily sedated.

If that was the case, corrections would be criticized for keeping her restrained and drugged during her stay at a mental facility or a prison.

Forensic facilities certain do have the means to handle violent inmates. But, since so many prisoners have mental problems, we should be turning all prisons into mental facilities. Smith isn't the only one who wasn't getting the help she needs while locked up. All we're doing in prisons is making people worse when they come out.

I'm not trying to be funny here. Why was this young lady not put into a padded cell with a paper gown? If she was that violent and suicidal she should have been placed in a cell/unit that gave the least possible way(s) for her to do self-harm.

As a former corrections officer there is no way in hell that you watch/film someone committing suicide and not go in to the cell/unit and cut the person down. There are cases where you can't but from the artical there was no physical reason that prevented them from entering. Whoever gave that order for them not to enter should be tried for aiding in a homicide.

She wasn't committing suicide. She was choking herself to get attention, would usually release the stricture before she stopped breathing. Yes the order to only intervene if she stopped breathing was wrong - how the hell can you tell thru a little window in the first place. But also, just escalating punishment for her acting out didn't work either. She needed mental health care.

How long are you going to keep her in a padded cell with a paper gown? How will this make her better?

I have worked in RCMP holding cells, and once watched a dumbass try and drown herself in the shitter

Not sure how it works in Canada's jails but the ones I worked in we had Phyc Doc's who came in at least once a week. The would do evaluations and issue medication. Once the person in the cell became "stable" they would be up graded into a medical ISO cell. As they continued to improve they would get upgraded till in general population.

There's probably no medication for the personality disorder this girl had. She wasn't suicidal, as I said, she wasn't psychotic. Her "crimes" didn't rise to the level of being in prison for any length of time. She just responded to punishment with more defiance. They needed a different way of dealing with her.

She engaged in self harm(almost 200 recorded incidents), including auto asphyxiation, and when the guards went in to check on her she would attack them,often with anything she could use as a weapon.

You're too quick to judge when you don't have all the facts.

Do you think that police and guards just opted to wear riot gear around her just because she was a chronic apple thrower?

You're missing the point entirely. This was a mental health issue from the beginning, not a 'crime and punnishment' issue. Unfortunately, it seems corrections canada only knows how to deal with the latter - I guess when you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Their punishment measures only caused her behaviour to get worse, which in turn lead to more punishment and even worse behaviour, and on it went in a viscious cycle until she ended up dead. How it didn't occur to them that they were only making the matter worse is beyond me - my guess is that they didn't really care.

I know people who have worked at Mental health facilities, they can and do deal with people who get violent. The difference being that since they're not law enforcement they don't deal have a "let's punish the bad guy" approach.

You're too quick to judge when you don't have all the facts.

Do you think that police and guards just opted to wear riot gear around her just because she was a chronic apple thrower?

I can well imagine that her death was "handy" for them ... given the difficulties, and all.

How about this.

You put yourself in harms way and let's see how liberal you are with your stance on coddling the violent mentally ill people. Are all mentally ill people controllable with a little love and some medication?

You're passing it off like you know everything and can say with certainty that she should have been handled differently from the beginning.

This is a woman who was in and out of mental health facilities numerous times in her life and was transferred around because she was a violent psychopath. To pretend that Corrections Canada just put her in a cell and closed the door all while ignoring her mental health is incorrect.