Ashley Smith family demands criminal probe

Ashley Smith, 19 at the time of her death, was in solitary confinement and on suicide watch when she strangled herself with a piece of cloth in October 2007 at the Grand Valley Institution for Women, a federal prison in Kitchener, Ont.

Her family has sent two letters to the head of the RCMP demanding a formal criminal probe into the abuse they say she received at Grand Valley, Joliette Institution in Quebec and other institutions across the country.