Note
Title from disc label.
Originally broadcast on the CBC News program, the Fifth estate, on January 8, 2010.
Résumé
Ashley Smith was a troubled 19-year-old when she choked herself to death at Ontario's Grand Valley Institution for Women. Her death made national headlines and led to a scathing report by Canada’s federal prison ombudsman. Incarceration for Ashley began at a youth detention centre in New Brunswick. Her crime: she had tossed crabapples at a mailman. Her one-month sentence stretched to almost four years, served in five provinces. To tell her story, the fifth estate fought for and gained access to shocking prison video, showing Ashley being subdued by force, pepper sprayed, and cocooned in a completely restrictive body bag. The longer she was treated this way, the worse her behaviour became. She needed mental health care but never got it. With the prison videotapes and exclusive access to Smith’s parents, along with a fellow inmate, the fifth estate exposes a system that fails the many Ashley Smiths still incarcerated in Canadian institutions.