British Columbia has settled a class-action lawsuit over solitary confinement in provincial correctional centres for up to $60 million. The B.C. Supreme Court approved the settlement in October 2025. People held in segregation for 15 or more consecutive days, or while mentally ill, between 2005 and 2025 can claim up to $91,000 by January 11, 2027.
What the lawsuit alleged
The case was filed more than seven years before the settlement was announced. It challenged how provincial institutions used segregation, alleging the practice amounted to “cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment” and involved systemic mistreatment of inmates.
The representative plaintiff, Neveah North, formerly known as Cody Cragg, had been placed in segregation at times while incarcerated at the Prince George Regional Correctional Centre between April 2014 and May 2018, according to the Canadian Press report.
The settlement covers placements at institutions across the province. The agreement lists the Alouette Correctional Centre for Women, the Fraser, Kamloops, Prince George and Vancouver Island regional correctional centres, the North Fraser Pretrial Centre, the Surrey Pretrial Services Centre and the Ford Mountain, Nanaimo and Okanagan correctional centres.
Who can claim, and how much
The legal notice for the settlement says the class includes anyone who served time in a B.C. jail and was placed in separate confinement or segregation between April 18, 2005, and October 22, 2025, either for 15 or more consecutive days, or at a time when B.C. Corrections knew or ought to have known the person had a mental illness.
The claims period opened on January 10, 2026, and runs to January 11, 2027. Claims are handled by the administrator, Proactio, and forms are available online, through probation and parole offices, and inside B.C. jails, where incarcerated people can request a form and a prepaid return envelope on their living unit.
An eligible claimant can receive up to $91,000, depending on individual circumstances. The money is divided into two main funds. A $30-million common experience fund covers the shared experience of prolonged segregation. A $25-million serious harms fund covers people who suffered more serious effects, and it rises by $5 million if more than 2,500 eligible serious-harms claims are made.
Within those funds, up to $85,000 is available for serious harms. Further amounts of up to $3,000 can go to people subjected to prolonged confinement, and up to $6,000 to people with serious mental illnesses. The notice defines serious harms to include a new mental illness diagnosis within 90 days of being placed in solitary confinement, self-injury during a segregation placement, or a suicide attempt during segregation or within 60 days after it.
Some older placements are treated differently. People whose segregation ended before November 26, 2016, or that occurred between December 23, 2020, and July 30, 2022, can claim only through a separate statute-barred claims process.
Reform is part of the agreement
The settlement is not only about money. It includes a section on reforming segregation practices, aimed at improving the conditions of separate confinement.
Lawyers for the class and for the government agreed to meet every three months for the next two years to review policy reforms. Those discussions include ensuring people removed from the general population get meaningful and constitutionally compliant time out of their cells. The agreement also calls for better screening of prisoners with serious mental illnesses.
After two years, the parties must file a report with the court setting out what reforms BC Corrections has actually implemented. That reporting duty gives the public a way to check, in 2028, whether the practice changed along with the payout.
