Manitoba agreed to pay $129-million in the class action case, after plaintiffs alleged incarcerated young people were subjected to extreme conditions.JOHN WOODS/The Canadian Press
The Manitoba government has agreed to pay $129-million to settle a landmark class action lawsuit that targeted the province’s practice of putting incarcerated children in segregation jail cells.
Court of King’s Bench Justice Theodor Bock approved the agreement orally in a Winnipeg courtroom on Thursday.
The plaintiffs’ lead lawyer, James Sayce, said the settlement is one of the largest in Manitoba’s history, which he described as a recognition of the damage that has been done.
“We’re very hopeful that this case will put an end to the practice of solitary confinement – for children, adults, the seriously mentally ill, for everyone incarcerated in Manitoba,” Mr. Sayce said.
Thursday’s settlement marks the end of a legal process that has spanned more than seven years, and is the latest in a string of lawsuits that have successfully challenged how the practice of segregating prisoners in individual cells is used in Canada – a practice that in its most extreme form is known as solitary confinement.
The Manitoba case is unique in that it dealt with incarcerated youth. While youth segregation does happen elsewhere in Canada, the recent lawsuit alleges the conditions in Manitoba were extreme and amounted to “torture.”
In Manitoba, it is legal to place youth inmates in segregation cells under certain circumstances. However, the practice is meant to be used as a last resort and not as a punishment.
James Sayce, lead lawyer for the plaintiffs.Jennifer Roberts/The Globe and Mail
The class action lawsuit, which was filed by Toronto-based law firm Koskie Minsky LLP, alleged that Manitoba was violating its own policies and was routinely subjecting children to what it described as “solitary confinement” for months at a time, which the lawsuit argued was a violation of the inmates’ Charter rights.
The province has maintained that its practices do not amount to solitary confinement.
In an e-mail statement to The Globe and Mail, Ben Leahy, press secretary for Manitoba Justice Minister Matt Wiebe, said the Manitoba government acknowledges the approved settlement and will reserve further comments until Justice Bock’s written decision is released.
Craig Haney, a psychology professor with the University of California, Santa Cruz, who provided an expert report as part of the lawsuit, found that Manitoba segregation sites “rivalled anything I have observed in some of the worst solitary confinement units in the United States.”
Provincial data produced as part of the class action – and obtained and analyzed by The Globe – revealed that between 2006 and 2022 there were more than 34,000 incidents of youth being put in segregation cells. Some were as young as 12 and 13 years old. In some cases, the youth were held in windowless rooms that were smaller than a parking space.
The province’s practice of segregating youth inmates has been a long-standing issue in Manitoba. In 2019, both the Manitoba Ombudsman and the Manitoba Advocate for Children and Youth released reports condemning the use of youth segregation.
The Ombudsman noted that Canada signed multiple international agreements that ban the use of youth segregation, including the Nelson Mandela Rules and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Thursday’s settlement did not only apply to youth inmates in Manitoba. Adults who spent longer than 15 days in segregation units, and adults who had been previously diagnosed with a mental illness before being placed in a segregation unit, were also included in the approved agreement.
Within the agreement, the province also committed to reviewing conditions within its segregation units and meeting with the plaintiffs’ counsel quarterly over two years to discuss segregation policy reforms.
Individuals eligible under the class action can receive a settlement amount ranging from $3,000 to $100,000, according to court documents.