After Canada stopped using solitary confinement, it made an exception for these prisoners

In this still photo from a prison video, Joey Toutsaint is strapped down to a special stretcher with restraints before being put in an observation cell, after he picked at a suture on his neck and was pepper-sprayed by guards. Article contentIt is Nov. 5, 2024. Over the course of half an hour, a hand-held camera follows Joey Toutsaint as prison guards forcibly remove him from a cell, then lead him through a hall, across a yard and into another building. The camera captures him pleading.

“I’m not going to the observation cell. No. You guys are making a mistake. Put me back in my cell.”

At one point, he weeps. “I won’t self-harm … I give you my word. On my mother’s grave. On my daughter’s life…. I don’t want to live like this no more.”

“I recognize you have mental health issues,” an officer says at one point.

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The prison guards lead Toutsaint, wrapped in a blanket after a strip search, into the observation cell.

“As you can see on camera,” one of the officers says to the person filming before the camera is turned off, “we had some challenges with Mr. Toutsaint and wanting to submit to going into the observation cell.”

Observation cells are bare rooms subject to 24/7 surveillance in which prisoners such as Toutsaint are placed, dressed in a sleeveless, untearable smock and sometimes without a blanket or mattress, when they have tried to harm themselves or are suspected of intending to do so.

Another variant on these isolation cells is the “dry cell,” which is similarly bare but lacks plumbing or running water. It’s used when prison staff want someone to excrete something they are suspected of having swallowed or hidden in their body, such as drugs.

Canada does not call these cells solitary confinement.

But their use meets a definition of solitary under international rules — to which Canada has agreed — that are meant to minimize the use of such isolation.

What are known as the “Mandela Rules” define solitary confinement as 22 hours a day or more without meaningful human contact, and define prolonged solitary confinement as a period exceeding 15 consecutive days. The rules say solitary confinement should only be used “in exceptional cases as a last resort” and should be “prohibited in the case of prisoners with mental or physical disabilities when their conditions would be exacerbated by such measures.”