Grand Valley Institution for Women

Grand Valley Institution for Women (GVI; French: Établissement pour femmes Grand Valley[1]) is a women's prison in Kitchener, Ontario, operated by the federal Correctional Service of Canada (CSC).

Grand Valley Institution for Women
LocationKitchener, Ontario
Coordinates43.4010°N 80.4420°W / 43.4010; -80.4420
Security classMulti-level
Capacity171 approx.
Opened1997
Managed byCorrectional Service of Canada
Notable prisoners
Terri-Lynne McClintic, Jennifer Pan, Ashley Smith, Elizabeth Wettlaufer

In Canada, women sentenced to prison terms of greater than two years serve their time in a federal institution operated by the CSC. In Ontario, there is one penitentiary which can house approximately 130 women as of April 2010, though the population has since risen.[2] Grand Valley Institute for Women is now the only federal women's prison in Ontario.[3]

History

The prison opened in 1997. Previously Prison for Women in Kingston, Ontario was the only federal women's prison in Canada. Area neighbors initially opposed the development due to its location in Kitchener and its proximity to residential areas, but as of 2017 the opposition had died down. The housing for lower security prisoners was built first, and the housing for maximum security prisoners was built later.[3]

On October 19, 2007, prison officials at the Grand Valley Institution observed the death of 19-year-old inmate Ashley Smith causing much controversy and legal inquest.[4]

Composition

The majority of the prisoners live in detached buildings, or "cottages".[3]

The prison has a secure unit for prisoners temporarily held in administrative segregation, who do not communicate with other prisoners, and those classified as maximum security prisoners, who are held in "pods" which each have five cells.[3]

Initially the prison had a white picket fence as a boundary, but a chain-link barbed wire fence later replaced it.[3]

Demographics

Circa 2017 the prison had 168 prisoners, with most of them each having four or fewer years remaining of their sentences, and 13 of them being classified as maximum security. Four of them had children accompanying them.[3]

Circa 2017 the prison had 208 employees.[3]

Programs

The program in which mothers have children with them in prison had been active since 2016 and is active as of 2017. Ryan Flanagan of CTV stated that previously the program was in "fits and starts".[3]

Notable prisoners
gollark: Hmm. Bizarre.
gollark: Deaths are temporarily disabled.
gollark: I'd prefer something which makes the config for each service into just one file, and has something nice like `systemctl status` to see the running status and last few output lines of a service.
gollark: Also simpler, since you would avoid having to have weird interfaces between the `runsvdir` and `runsv`s.
gollark: I feel like it would be more efficient to move that into one process which can then do dependency management and stuff.

References
  1. "Établissement pour femmes Grand Valley." Correctional Service of Canada. Retrieved on 6 August 2016. See English page
  2. Institutional Profiles Ontario Region - Grand Valley Institution for Women
  3. Flanagan, Ryan (2017-09-26). "Life in prison: Behind the barbed wire at Grand Valley Institution". CTV News. Retrieved 2018-09-21.
  4. Montreal Gazette: Corrections officials withholding dead inmate's records: lawyer
  5. Grimaldi, Jeremy. A Daughter's Deadly Deception: The Jennifer Pan Story. Dundurn Books, November 12, 2016. ISBN 1459735250, 9781459735255 p. 313, or ISBN 1459735269, 9781459735262 Google Books PT273.
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