Jailing of man with Down syndrome in Canada highlights lack of services

From The Ottawa Citizen:

OTTAWA — A 30-year-old man with Down syndrome and bipolar disorder has been housed in a segregated cell at the Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre for more
than two weeks, a case some say highlights a gap in the criminal justice system.

Karl Gauthier is charged with assault after an alleged incident last month involving a worker at his Nation Township group home. He is expected to remain at the jail until at least Wednesday, when he has a bail hearing.

Until he is released, Mr. Gauthier faces “horrific” conditions at OCDC, according to Dave Lundy, an official with the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, which represents correctional officers at the jail.

“The reports I have are that he’s standing in his own … urine,” Mr. Lundy said, adding Mr. Gauthier soils his sheets and needs his diapers changed. Correctional officers are “not given the training to help an individual like that,” Mr. Lundy said.

“If you’re going to house a developmentally disabled individual such as that in a jail, what’s next?”

Mr. Gauthier’s lawyer, John Hale, said his client is, in some ways, “fairly high functioning,” but is also prone to outbursts.

Mr. Gauthier has been found fit to stand trial. He was also charged in November with assault causing bodily harm after another alleged incident involving a group home worker, Mr. Hale said.

After allegedly committing two offences at the same home, “it was seen as dangerous to let him go back there,” he said.

“There is a real gap for guys like this who suffer fairly serious mental illnesses and get caught up in the criminal justice system but who don’t fall into those two very discrete categories of either unfit (to stand trial) or NCR (not criminally responsible for the alleged crime),” which would allow them to be admitted to the Royal Ottawa Mental Health Centre, said Mr. Hale.

“If it’s not a fitness or NCR issue, then you have to hope there’s some place in the community that will take him in,” Mr. Hale said.

Staff at the group home are now converting an outbuilding on the property into an apartment for Mr. Gauthier in anticipation of his return after the bail hearing, L’Orignal court was told Wednesday.

While leaving the courtroom last week, a handcuffed Mr. Gauthier asked his lawyer if he could have access to his Gameboy.

“We’re anxious for him to get out and we’re looking forward and anxious to start this new phase of the plan and of the support that we we want to give him,” said Jacques Pelletier, executive vice-president of Solution-s, an Eastern Ontario organization that gives adults with developmental disabilities, psychiatric conditions and behavioural challenges access to specialized clinical supports and services.

Mr. Gauthier has been a client of the organization for about eight months, Mr. Pelletier said.

“There’s no way that we think that the jail is the proper place for Mr. Gauthier,” he said, adding his organization is now providing intensive training for the staff at the home, where Mr. Gauthier has lived for about six months.

Solution-s staff are also developing respite services and protocols on interacting with Mr. Gauthier, in addition to offering him support, Mr. Pelletier said.

“We do think that this man has what it takes to get his life together, we just need to break this cycle. The more he goes in front of a judge, the more he goes to jail, the more it’s difficult to break,” Mr. Pelletier said.

Mr. Lundy called Mr. Gauthier’s detention at the jail a “tragedy” that affects the inmate and correctional officers.

“That’s not their job, to be social workers,” he said, adding that guards have gone “above and beyond” to try to help Mr. Gauthier by bringing in cartoons, crayons and colouring books.

Mr. Gauthier’s case “also speaks to the conditions that the correctional officers have to work in,” said Mr. Lundy, whose union members recently rejected a contract offer from the provincial government that contained proposed cuts to sick time.

About 250 correctional officers at OCDC are among the union membership.

“When you’ve got an individual standing in urine, who is basically naked ... whose sheets are soiled, there’s dirty diapers on the floor, out the door, there’s feces on the wall — that’s an environment where you’ve got disease and parasites. That leads to sickness,” Mr. Lundy said.

Dr. John Bradford, the associate chief in charge of forensic psychiatry with the Royal Ottawa Health Care Group, said that despite checks and balances in the system, a person could end up in jail even though he or she “may not be suited to that environment at all.”

Jail is a “stressful place,” said Dr. Bradford, who is also a professor and head of the division of forensic psychiatry at the University of Ottawa.

“Having a person with Down syndrome, limited socialization skills, certainly limited intellectual skills, in a harsh environment like that, there are some real questions about whether this is the best place for that person,” he said.

Dr. Bradford, who was not familiar with Mr. Gauthier’s case, said the issue highlights the need for crisis or emergency beds where people can go on short notice.

“I know they do have some of those crisis beds (in the system) but at times I’ve felt that they probably are under too much pressure,” Dr. Bradford said.

It’s not the first time Mr. Gauthier has stayed at OCDC.

In January 2005, he spent 12 days in jail after being charged with uttering a threat against staff at the group home where he lived.

After Mr. Gauthier refused to go back to the home, there was nowhere else for him to go. The charges were eventually removed from the record after an earlier decision by the group home staff to drop them.

During court proceedings in that case, a forensic psychiatrist testified that Mr. Gauthier’s plight denoted a gap in services for people like him in the criminal justice system.

Though he was sufficiently well to stand trial, the psychiatrist described him as needing a “crisis facility for acute treatment.”