A corrections officer opens the door to a cell in the segregation unit at the federal Fraser Valley Institution for Women in Abbotsford, B.C., in 2017.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press

Simon Rolston is the author of Prison Life Writing: Conversion and the Literary Roots of the U.S. Prison System. He teaches at Langara College.

Joey Toutsaint is an Indigenous man currently serving an indeterminate sentence in a maximum-security prison. He’s spent more than seven years in different forms of solitary confinement, and isolation has had a profoundly damaging effect on him. His body’s covered with scars from his many incidents of self-harm, which have included trying to chew through his arm to open an artery.

When Mr. Toutsaint would self-harm, he’d be placed in an observation cell, which is another form of isolation – solitary confinement but under a different name. His mental health deteriorated, and as a result he spent more, not less, time in isolation. Eventually, he often refused to leave isolation because he’d grown so accustomed to it.

Mr. Toutsaint’s story is sadly not unique in Canada’s prison system. Far too many prisoners continue to be subjected to isolation conditions that constitute torture under the United Nations’ “Mandela Rules” and infringe on prisoners’ Charter rights,........

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