Kol Hakvod to the courts...it is reprensible behavior to keep a wife chained. More actions like this one should be done to such husbands!

First, if the Rabbinical Court is allowed to DECIDE, it could simply order that the woman is DIVORCED NOW. Than she's legally divorced. End of the story. Or the Court has the opinion for RELIGIOUS reasons, that a divorce can ONLY take effect when the husband WITH HIS FREE WILL agrees to be divorced. If putting him to jail this can't be reached because God could say: "This was not his FREE will because he was FORCED by throwing him to jail." The difference to your secular court in Canada is simply, that in this case METAPHYSICAL concepts are involved – God is involved. When God accepts the divorce ONLY... when it is based on the FREE DECISION OF THE HUSBAND – then forcing him with jail means that in the eyes of God the decision can not be valid because the decision is not expression of the husband's FREE will (as God expects it) but FORCED. Got it... ;-)