What privacy rights does an inmate have in a correctional institution?

British Columbia, Canada


The following excerpt is from R. v. Ballantyne, 2008 BCSC 1566 (CanLII):

I start with the expectation of privacy an inmate in a prison would reasonably have. Various cases deal with the effect that prisoners in correctional institutions, whether they be on remand or serving a sentence, have a greatly reduced objective expectation of privacy even with respect to their own physical bodies which are subject to intrusive search upon admission to a prison and thereafter random searches and viewing while they are on remand or incarcerated. Mr. Justice LaForest wrote, 15 years ago, in Weatherall v. Canada (Attorney General), 1993 CanLII 112 (SCC), [1993] S.C.J. No. 81, [1993] 2 S.C.R. 872, at para. 5: Imprisonment necessarily entails surveillance, search and scrutiny. A prison cell is expected to be exposed and to require observation. The frisk search, the count and the wind are all practices necessary in a penitentiary for the security of the institution, the public and indeed the prisoners themselves. A substantially reduced level of privacy is present in this setting and a prisoner thus cannot hold a reasonable expectation of privacy with respect to these practices. This conclusion is unaffected by the fact that the practices at times may be conducted by female guards. There being no reasonable expectation of privacy, s. 8 of the Charter is not called into play; nor is s. 7 implicated.

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