Warden underestimated difficulties dealing with Ashley Smith
TORONTO – The warden of a women’s prison in Nova Scotia is telling an inquest in Toronto that he underestimated how difficult Ashley Smith would be as an inmate.
Alfred Legere says staff at Nova Institution knew Smith was self-harming and had some “extremely difficult behaviours.”
As a result, authorities placed the teenager in segregation as soon as she arrivedfrom youth custody in October 2006.
Still, Legere says Smith, 18, immediately alarmed guards by smearing feces on her cell camera and by throwing her excrement at them.
Smith also managed to “destroy” two segregation cells within days of arrival at Nova.
Smith would choke herself to death a year later at a prison in Kitchener, Ont.
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