Article 25 of the Quebec Charter of Rights and Freedoms indicates that any detained person must be treated humanely. Where is the humanity, when we address a detainee in foul language, when we use intimidating gestures towards her, when we push her so that she moves more quickly towards her cell, when we do not respect not her medication, when she is offered brownish, lead-contaminated water, when bad food causes her cholesterol levels to skyrocket, when the air she breathes is stale, when rats roam the corridors and cells?
Article 25 also says that the detained person must be treated with respect. Where is the respect, when an inmate is freezing in her cell due to lack of heating, when her bunk is infested with bedbugs, when worms are crawling on the shower floor, when the place is infested with flies because the mosquito nets are high, when you feel dirty because sanitary napkins are supplied in dribs and drabs, when your bronchial tubes itch due to mold, dirt, dust, when faulty toilets overflow frequently, to the point to make you feel nauseous?
That prison deprives freedom goes without saying. That it deprives dignity is unacceptable. Section 25 must stop being ignored, because this ignorance is leading to the suicide of inmates in this women’s prison located in Laval, just north of Montreal. Indeed, on April 8, 2016, June 29, 2017, September 23, 2017, November 5, 2019, May 2, 2021 and November 21, 2023, inmates ended their lives. Between February 2016 and August 2022, 15 suicide attempts were documented.
In France, to compare with the Leclerc prison, there are, between 2016 and 2023, five suicides of women detained in five different prisons, while the six suicides of women incarcerated in Quebec took place at the Leclerc prison alone. How can we explain so many suicides in a single prison, six in seven years? Because we are trying to degrade the women who are imprisoned there, to the point of annihilating everything that remains of their own: their dignity. In short, Leclerc prison is a place where the Quebec Charter of Rights and Freedoms does not apply.
The culture of this establishment does not repair lives, it breaks them. What happens there does not interest the Quebec government. Because they are women.