The death of Ashley Smith represents the first time in Canadian legal history that correctional officers were criminally charged in the death of a prisoner under the care of the state. In response to these unprecedented charges, the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers (UCCO) mounted a highly public campaign in defense of the officers. In this article, I review UCCO’s media statements following Smith’s death, submissions to various government review committees, and the current Global Agreement between UCCO and Correctional Service Canada (CSC) regarding federally sentenced women. I suggest these narratives work to reproduce administrative segregation as necessary to manage “troubled young women” who are constituted as an unsafe working condition for officers. I highlight the failure of UCCO to influence government policy, unlike the effective success of unions in the United States, and I challenge the place of UCCO in Canada’s trade union movement.
