We examine the use of forced confinement and isolation to limit the spread of COVID-19 in Ontario prisons and jails. Drawing on interview data, we illustrate how a reliance on forced confinement and isolation has exacerbated harms experienced by prisoners in relation to physical, mental, and social health. Through discourse analysis of grey literature, we then discuss the politics and governance of carceral institutions during the pandemic, focusing on how practices of isolation were legitimized during the pandemic, despite recent rulings establishing isolation and segregation as torture. We close by arguing that the case of isolation during the pandemic is one example which highlights the systemic and ongoing nature of rights violations in Canadian prisons and jails. To address these harms, we must shift focus away from reform and towards decarceration.

During the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, individuals were asked to stay home and restrict outings to limit the spread of the virus. Physical isolation was particularly emphasized for older adults over the age of 60 who, because of their age and related medical conditions, were at increased risk of severe disease and death from the virus. This led to reduced spread of the virus but also to social and emotional health challenges for older adults. Protecting the physical health of older adults was of the utmost importance during the pandemic but supporting social and mental health must not be overlooked. This patient-oriented qualitative study involved 40 interviews with older adults, conducted in the early stages of the pandemic, followed by a thematic analysis. Three themes were derived from the findings: subverted life plan, emotional impacts, and creating a path forward. The findings from this study will help inform current physical and social distancing guidelines during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, findings indicate that social and emotional challenges with ongoing physical and social isolation must be taken into consideration for future pandemics.

Terrorism, while not new in the history of humanity, has become a major issue and challenge for contemporary society worldwide. Recently it has become embodied and symbolized by the “Islamic State in Iraq and Syria” (ISIS) in its many permutations in the Middle East, the focus of massive military intervention on the part of major world powers and of study, analysis, strategy and planning. One aspect that has distinguished ISIS from previous terrorist movements is a major migration of women, especially but not limited to Western Europe, joining the jihad proclaimed by the religious leaders of ISIS. This introduction to the special issue on Female Migration to ISIS surveys and identifies the known possible roots of the phenomenon and related issues, summarizes major known points relative to it, and outlines the future agenda of work, not only academic but also practical and strategic, to be followed. Balanced recommendations on how to build a promising intervention strategy not only based on military force are put forth for consideration and discussion. While based on research, this article should be considered more of an editorial, generally introducing the field, summarizing existing work, especially the content of this special issue, and pointing out work needed in the future.

Ashley Smith’s experience in the adult prison system flowed from certain of its systemic features. This article considers whether and how it is possible to reconcile the basic commitments of sentencing law, including the legal aims of punishment, with that systemic portrait. The youth court that ordered Smith’s transfer to adult custody relied upon an idealized conception of adult imprisonment, just as ordinary adult sentencing courts do. Judges purport to stipulate the severity of punishment, but tend not to consider how prison conditions will shape the severity of the sanction. Even where a particular defendant is likely to face unique difficulties in custody, courts tend to take notice in limited and rare ways. Smith’s experience in adult custody challenges us to more clearly identify, and to consider extending, doctrinal sentencing rules that represent a judicial concern with the effects and prospects of imprisonment in particular cases.

This paper considers the role that litigation might play in ending the human rights crisis of solitary confinement in Canada while also examining the relationship of prisoner rights litigation to broader, anti-carceral social movements. The paper proceeds in four parts. The first section provides a brief overview of the widespread use of solitary confinement in Canada’s federal prisons and in provincial and territorial jails. Next, current litigation seeking an end to solitary confinement in the federal prisons system is located in the context of a long history of prisoner rights litigation in both the US and Canada. The third section considers the possibilities and challenges of pursuing prisoner rights litigation with broader critiques of the carceral state in mind. The paper ends with examples of anti-carceral lawyering efforts and identifies some elements of a prison abolitionist lawyering ethic.

The death of Ashley Smith represents the first time in Canadian legal history that correctional officers were criminally charged in the death of a prisoner under the care of the state. In response to these unprecedented charges, the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers (UCCO) mounted a highly public campaign in defense of the officers. In this article, I review UCCO’s media statements following Smith’s death, submissions to various government review committees, and the current Global Agreement between UCCO and Correctional Service Canada (CSC) regarding federally sentenced women. I suggest these narratives work to reproduce administrative segregation as necessary to manage “troubled young women” who are constituted as an unsafe working condition for officers. I highlight the failure of UCCO to influence government policy, unlike the effective success of unions in the United States, and I challenge the place of UCCO in Canada’s trade union movement.

In the shift from inpatient to outpatient care that the province of Quebec is presently experiencing, the prompt assistance offered to older persons in then-domestic environment, is the kind of help that needs to be examined. The pilot project “Vie autonome chez soi” was intended to offer this type of service. The project took place in Montreal during 1990 and offered three services: a warden, a home security system and a telephone service (24–7). The objective of this evaluative study which uses a qualitative methodology is to discuss the implementation and functioning of the pilot project as well as to discover if some of the intended effects had been achieved through the services. Use of the alarm system had a positive impact on security for most of the participants who were still active in the project at the time of the evaluation. The warden services and the 24' security.

The purpose of this paper was to identify predictors of social isolation and loneliness for very old rural and urban adults. With data from the 1996 Aging in Manitoba Study (N = 1,868; age range 72–104), separate multiple regression models were constructed for rural and urban sub-samples, using the life space index (LSI) to measure social isolation as one outcome, and a loneliness index created by the authors from a combination of items to measure loneliness as a second outcome. Different factors were found to predict the outcomes for the two sub-samples. The models with isolation as the outcome produced five predictors for the rural sub-sample and three for the urban sub-sample. Only living alone was the same for both groups. The models with loneliness as the outcome produced five predictors for the rural sub-sample and two for the urban sub-sample, again with only one factor in common – four or more chronic illnesses. We conclude that health and social factors are important predictors of social isolation and loneliness, and sensitivity to these factors may improve the experience of older adults.