The Correctional Service Canada («CSC») procedure known as administrative segregation (similar to solitary confinement) authorizes the placement of inmates in small cells for up to 23 hours a day
without meaningful human contact.
Prisoners in solitary confinement are confined in prison cells and deprived of
meaningful human contact for up to 23 hours a day, sometimes for months and years at a time.
Thousands of people, disproportionately Black and Brown people, remain in solitary in New York each day: 22 to 24 hours a day in a cell without
any meaningful human contact or programs.
While Rosovsky said many people can not answer that question, he once received a memorable response:
meaningful human contact.
The Crown argued this week that segregated inmates have
meaningful human contact with prison staff such as wardens and nurses, says Rosenberg.
There is
no meaningful human contact [1]:
In response, the federal government maintained that administrative segregation, as prisons practise it, is necessary when there are no «reasonable alternatives» and is not solitary confinement since prisoners have an opportunity daily to make «
meaningful human contact.»
The «
meaningful human contact» stipulation comes from rule 44 of the United Nations» Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners that defines solitary confinement as «the confinement of prisoners for 22 hours or more a day without meaningful human contact.»