S-205Providing Alternatives to Isolation and Ensuring Oversight and Remedies in the Correctional System Act (Tona’s Law)

What it does

• Requires a mental health assessment for people sentenced, transferred, or committed to a penitentiary within 30 days, and for people moved into a structured intervention unit within 24 hours.
• Limits confinement in a structured intervention unit to 48 hours unless a superior court authorizes a longer stay.
• Lets the minister enter agreements with Indigenous organisations, Indigenous governing bodies, community groups serving disadvantaged or minority populations, and other community support providers.
• Allows the Commissioner to transfer a person in a penitentiary to one of those entities with the person’s and the entity’s consent, and requires the Commissioner to try to identify and seek such transfers.
• Requires Correctional Service to help people in prison connect with these groups for release and reintegration plans, and requires the Parole Board of Canada to give written reasons if it rejects a proposed plan.
• Lets a person sentenced to incarceration or parole ineligibility ask the sentencing court to reduce the sentence if correctional decisions or actions were unlawful, unfair, discriminatory, mistaken, or improper.