FLORIDA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS
CONTENTS
Monday 29 April 1996
Electronic monitoring
Florida Department of Corrections
Richard Nimer, member, electronic monitoring program
Operation Springboard
Marg Stanowski, executive director
Howard Pearl, chair of communications, board of directors
STANDING COMMITTEE ON ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE
Chair / Président: Martiniuk, Gerry (Cambridge PC)
Vice-Chair / Vice-Président: Johnson, Ron (Brantford PC)
*Boyd, Marion (London Centre / -Centre ND)
Chiarelli, Robert (Ottawa West / -Ouest L)
Conway, Sean G. (Renfrew North / -Nord L)
*Doyle, Ed (Wentworth East / -Est PC)
*Guzzo, Garry J. (Ottawa-Rideau PC)
*Hampton, Howard (Rainy River ND)
Hudak, Tim (Niagara South / -Sud PC)
*Johnson, Ron (Brantford PC)
Klees, Frank (York-Mackenzie PC)
*Leadston, Gary L. (Kitchener-Wilmot PC)
*Martiniuk, Gerry (Cambridge PC)
*Parker, John L. (York East / -Est PC)
*Ramsay, David (Timiskaming L)
*Tilson, David (Dufferin-Peel PC)
*In attendance / présents
Substitutions present / Membres remplaçants présents:
Cleary, John (Cornwall L) for Mr Conway
Carr, Gary (Oakville South / -Sud PC) for Mr Hudak
Also taking part / Autres participants et participantes:
Castrilli, Annamarie (Downsview L)
Clerk / Greffière: Donna Bryce
Staff / Personnel: Susan Swift, research officer, Legislative Research Service
The committee met at 1533 in room 228.
ELECTRONIC MONITORING
Consideration of the designated matter pursuant to standing order 125, relating to the impact of halfway house closures and the introduction of electronic monitoring.
FLORIDA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS
The Chair (Mr Gerry Martiniuk): Hello, Mr Nimer. How are you? My name is Gerry Martiniuk and I'm the Chairman of the standing committee on administration of justice. We are ready to proceed with our teleconference call.
I would first like to thank you for the background paper you forwarded to us. All members of the committee have read same. We also have forwarded to you, I understand, the Hansard transcript of an expert witness from BC, Mr Cairns, which would indicate to you the thrust of the thoughts of the committee to date.
I would like to thank you on behalf of the committee for taking part in our deliberations. I guess the only question I've been asked is, Mr Ramsay asked how the weather is down there, because it's raining here again.
Mr Richard Nimer: It's beautiful down here. It's about 85.
The Chair: If you would proceed, sir, we would be obliged.
Mr Nimer: Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity. I would like to give you just a brief historical perspective of where our house arrest or Community Control program has come from because in order to understand how we use electronic monitoring and essentially what impact it's had on our program, you really have to understand the basis of the program.
I think if you've looked at some of the stuff I sent you originally, you'll understand that community control, or house arrest -- those two terms are synonymous -- was created pretty much as a prison diversion program. We were not building a lot of prison beds in the state of Florida in 1983. We actually were in the midst of a crisis, and that is pretty much how the house arrest program became law. The Legislature, the department and other criminal justice officials were looking for ways to alleviate prison crowding. So it's under that kind of scenario that the house arrest program began.
Incidentally, I would mention today that the word "prison diversion" is a dirty word. We don't use that word now, we call them intermediate sanctions, because Florida and much of the country have taken a get-tough policy on crime and we've built quite a lot of prison beds in the last eight years. So we're now referring to it as an intermediate sanction.
The community control program, which started in 1983, was your basic intensive supervision program. Caseloads at that point were 20 offenders to one officer. We were making a minimum of three contacts during that period, and sometimes four, a week. Two of those would have been in the field and one in the office. There were numerous phone calls per week that were made to the offender or to the offender's employment or to a collateral, a family relative or somebody who knew the individual.
Out of that, and as the department was approached in 1985 by some companies with some crude electronic monitoring devices, essentially that's what became what we call Community Control II. The only difference between Community Control II and Community Control is simply electronic monitoring; there are no other program differences.
From the beginning and when we initially looked at electronic monitoring in 1985 we piloted a tel-cell, which is really an automated calling system, which many of us have become aware of. In our day-to-day lives today, tel-cells are very extensive, the automated phone systems. We also looked at pagers, and really it was kind of an initial form of caller ID. I don't know if you're familiar with that, but when we paged the individual, the computer could tell what phone number we were called back at, so that was one way to check and see if the offender was home and he was calling from the home phone. So that was really the early beginnings of what is now called caller ID.
We also, in 1985 and 1986, experimented with a wristlet system, which was a passive form of electronic monitoring, as well as voice verification. The voice verification system during that period was relatively crude, but it did at least let us know if the individual, the offender, answered the phone and took the voice test.
Then in 1986 we got into non-tamper RF units, which is probably the most widely accepted type of monitoring today, the RF monitoring, which you heard a good deal about last week, and in 1988 we went into what was called the RF tamper alert. That was where if the offender cut the wrist band or tried to circumvent it, in theory it would alert us that the individual tampered with it.
Quite frankly, since 1988, we have not seen too many advances in that current system. Of course you know that they have the alcohol and they have some other passive systems that go with that RF system, but generally speaking there hasn't been a tremendous amount of increase in the technology during that time period.
In 1990, the Florida Legislature sent over their auditing arm or their auditing body, which is known as the internal audit system, and did a review of our "electronic monitoring," Community Control II program. Generally, they believed it was cost-effective. However, we were chastised for not keeping any kind of real comparative analysis between Community Control I and Community Control II. Given that, we instituted a rather large research program at least to look at outcomes.
If you'll glance at page 4, you'll notice that we have a comparison since July 1, 1993, through outcomes of March 25, 1996. When you back out the active caseload, which is at the top of page 4, which you have to do to really get your true percentages on your outcomes, what we have found and we're getting ready to publish -- we're going to publish at the end of the year -- is that we have seen an 11.3% better result with offenders on Community Control II. This is significant for us, because in theory most offenders who are placed on Community Control II have already violated probation or have violated regular Community Control. Some are placed on the program initially when they are sentenced in court, but a good majority of them are cases that have already violated community supervision. To reiterate, in Florida we only use Community Control or electronic monitoring on those cases that are coming through the judicial circuit at sentencing. We do not use it for prison release cases. We have never used it on the back end, so to speak, of our population. It's been clearly, in this state, a front-end diversion program.
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Again, getting back to the 11.3% difference in the outcomes, this is rather significant, because in theory you would have a higher-risk population placed into Community Control II as opposed to regular Community Control. Some of the primary offence categories where we've noticed a difference, which really encompasses pages 5 and 6, includes an 8% better result with sex offenders.
I guess I'd better explain what "better result" is. One, we look at the percentage or the number of offenders who were reduced to probation, because in theory that means they went back to the court, the officer took the case back to the court, and said: "Judge, this case has done well. We'd like to place him on regular probation and get him off of Community Control or Community Control II." We've seen approximately 6% -- 6.3% -- more cases were reduced to probation from Community Control. We also had a 1.1% reduction in absconders. Absconders are the individuals who leave probation; we don't know where they're at. We've also had a slight reduction in new felonies, a slight reduction in misdemeanours and a 1.7% reduction in technical revocation. All told, of all the revocation categories, we see about a 4.5% reduction with Community Control II. When you couple that with the offenders' reduced probation as well as the normal termination, early termination and court termination, where there was also an increase in those counts -- very slightly, however -- the combined result is an 11.3% difference.
Clearly, if you look at these columns, the number of offenders we're dealing with, you'll see in the very bottom total in Community Control you're talking about 38,394 through basically it looks like a little bit more than two and a half years, and 3,596 offenders in community control II. So these numbers are now getting to be big enough where we can do some comparative analysis, and quite frankly we were a little bit shocked at the result, because we had traditionally always believed that electronic monitoring was simply surveillance and really didn't have any kind of a psychological or behavioural impact on the offender's actual disposition or outcome. I begin to believe that in fact it has had an impact, and as I go on, and I want to talk about youthful offenders as well, we've really noticed a significant difference.
Just to mention, on pages 5 and 6, what I did is basically the same scenario. I backed out the active population and then compared all those offenders either with electronic monitoring or without, and we saw 8% better result with sex offenders, and we had always believed that. We felt like electronic monitoring was extremely useful with sex offenders. Robbery, we saw a 5.1% better result; other violent crimes, 4.7%; burglary, 4%; drugs, 6%, which kind of shocked me; and theft and forgery, about 2%. So again we're seeing better results with what one would normally classify as a riskier or a higher-risk population.
If you do some detailed evaluation of pages 7 and 8, as we look at youthful offenders or we look at age as a factor, generally older offenders seem to complete both Community Control and Community Control II at a much higher rate than the younger offenders, and that would be true of all aspects of our supervision program. But what was unique is that when I looked at the category that was through age 17, we had a 19.6% better result. When I looked at another large age bracket, which was 18 to 24, we saw an 11.8% better result. This again is very significant for us, because I think now we have the kind of data we need to probably attempt to expand electronic monitoring, and especially might want to look for more use with our youthful offenders, with whom we've had a difficult time completing supervision over the years.
I'll entertain some questions, but let me just mention a couple of other things. Currently, we are paying an average cost of $2.39 a day for electronic monitoring. At one time, we owned all of our equipment, but it has since gotten off the lease and the manufacturers that came in and replaced this and pretty much just charge us an average of $2.39 a day for our monitoring and maintenance.
I think we believe that's a fairly low cost, and we're at the end of a five-year contract with two vendors, so we do expect those costs to increase. But at this point, I think clearly you could say the program is cost-effective because in a lot of ways, if you were to place a probation officer or a security guard on the doorstep of that offender's house, there's no way you could afford to do that for $2.39 a day. So clearly, for that price, we would have to say that electronic monitoring, at this point, has been very cost-effective for the department.
Lastly, I'd like to mention some of the areas that we're looking into right now. In fact, we just received an appropriation from the Florida Legislature to do a pilot program with global positioning satellite tracking, a new form of tracking. I think it was mentioned last week, one of the manufacturers of that product is a Florida-based company and I personally have been tracked recently with the new device and it seems to work extremely well, and we're really looking at that and trying to use that with our real high-risk cases: our sex offenders, our paedophiles and also our domestic violence cases.
Last year in the state of Florida we had 196 domestic violence murders. We look at this tracking system as a way to provide some additional support for victims, because they too can carry this device and be warned if a stalker or a predator is within a few miles of their particular location.
Those are two areas that we're looking at. We think that's the next step in electronic monitoring and we'll move forward but move forward very slowly on it.
We also see a resurgence nation-wide in voice verification. There are some newer systems out. We are in essence piloting, starting May 6, a new voice verification in two different locations. I'm not sure how that will go but certainly it will have a use with certain types of offenders.
We are also looking at kiosks as a different form of electronic monitoring, pretty much to be utilized with our administrative cases, where we don't have a lot of time to see a lot of low-risk or administrative probationers. We may use the machine that they go to report to, identifies who they are and eventually collects any payments that they may have to make to the state of Florida or to victims.
We still believe RF, the current system out there, will be a viable continual system and we are planning at this point to continue to use RF. As I say, we're going to move very slowly on GPS and make sure it serves our needs.
We've also been contacted by a company involved in camera surveillance and listening devices, and right now we have no plans to move in that particular direction.
Lastly, I would just mention that we have a rather large programming effort in probation and parole. None of the statistics that you have been sent look at whether or not that individual has programming. I can tell you that we have probably, under house arrest, right now 15,000 people. We have another 135,000 under probation. And of those 150,000 offenders, approximately 50,000 will receive programming in one form or another this year, and none of those reports that you received had any variance for programming. In general, if they need it, they get it.
With that, I'll stop.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr Nimer. We're going to rotate through the various caucuses, and I would assume Mr Ramsay will go first. Mr Ramsay represents what we call the loyal opposition, which is somewhat of an oxymoron, and he is a former Solicitor General of Ontario. Mr Ramsay, if you would proceed with any questions you have.
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Mr David Ramsay (Timiskaming): Thank you very much, Mr Nimer, for joining us today from your 85-degree weather down there in Florida. We're very envious.
I have a few questions and I'll do a few and then pass it on to my colleagues, and I think we'll go back in rotation as we proceed for the rest of our hour. I was wondering, on your electronic monitoring cases, do you combine any home visits with the electronic monitoring system?
Mr Nimer: Yes. They receive the same number of visits as a case that is not on community control. We made that decision early on that we were still going to have the officer go to the house and make the same number of contacts. The current level of contacts are three mandatory per week. Two contacts a week are in the field and then we mandate one contact in the office. That has not changed.
Mr Ramsay: I was really struck by the success rate of your Community Control II versus I and that you feel that just having offenders involved in an electronic monitoring program has some sort of psychological benefit other than just surveillance. Have you done any more work on that?
Mr Nimer: No, we have not, and I'll tell you --
Failure of sound system.
Mr Nimer: What we will do now is I think we'll try and get a little deeper into it, look at prior records. Of course, we've already broken them out by primary offence, but we will look at prior records, we will look at programming and we will look at a program called client management classification, which is what we call CMC, and it's an assessment that's done with all Community Control offenders.
What we've noticed is certainly a difference, almost 18% better outcomes with those offenders who go through that process. But I can tell you that we instituted that in 1993, so just about all of these outcomes -- these offenders would have gone through CMC. I don't expect that there will be much difference in what I've told you today, because again, as I mentioned, all offenders who need programs are essentially placed in programs, whether it be drug treatment, educational or vocational, whether it be short-term residential, long-term residential. We have the resources right now in the state where we're able to put most of these people into programs. So I don't think there's going to be much difference.
Mr Ramsay: About those programs, how do you physically deliver those programs? The people are basically under house arrest, so they're in their homes.
Mr Nimer: They're allowed to leave to go to programming. They're allowed to go to church, to programming, allowed about an hour or two hours' worth of shopping a week, and it's all pre-arranged before the week starts.
Mr Ramsay: Do you put on these programs or do you contract out to agencies in the community to deliver these programs for the offenders?
Mr Nimer: Ninety-five per cent of the programs are contracted out.
Mrs Marion Boyd (London Centre): This is Marion Boyd. I'm a member of the third party, also in opposition. I wanted to ask you a couple of questions following along from Mr Ramsay's recent question about programs. When you say they're contracted out, you pay the fees? I notice that you've got a prisoner-pay system in terms of at least some of the cost of your equipment. Do they pay for their programs as well as the charge for paying for the equipment?
Mr Nimer: Yes, there is a cost. Most of it does not ever come close to paying the total bill but normally it's somewhere in the vicinity of 5% to 10%, 15%. We do have offender copayments when offenders are placed in our residential treatment programs. When they go to work, they pay $42 a week. They pay for their drug tests. They also pay for any medical exams or medical treatment that they need. The $42 a week is pretty much what covers their food and transportation.
Outpatient payments, they may pay as much as $5, $10, $15, $20 a week towards the cost to the department. We have a lot of psychological programs now and mental health treatment programs. They also pay a portion of that, as well as paying cost-of-supervision fees, which can range anywhere from $40 to $50 a month. Victim restitution and any other fines or court costs that were imposed -- last year we collected almost $60 million in offender payments for that group of 140,000 people on community-based supervision.
Mrs Boyd: Does that mean that in order to be on this program, one has to be employed or have some private income, because it would seem that this would make this a program that would really only be available to those who could pay those fees otherwise?
Mr Nimer: No, that's not the case. About 20% to 25% of our offenders are indigents and any kind of cost, plus the supervision, electronic monitoring costs, they're all weighed.
On our electronic monitoring cost, we're only authorized by the Legislature to collect up to $30 a month and I'd say that has only been ordered in about 10% of the cases. The state appropriates almost $700,000 a year for this program and we collect probably $50,000 a year from the offenders, so the state has pretty much picked up the tab on electronic monitoring.
Mrs Boyd: I think I may have just not heard entirely what you said there because I thought I understood you in my previous question to say that you take in $50 million a year in terms of --
Mr Nimer: Yes. We took in almost $60 million last year, but that is not just house arrests but the 130,000 last year who were on probation and the 15,000 who were on house arrest. So out of approximately -- last year it was about 140,000-and-some-odd offenders we collected almost $60 million, but out of that $60 million only $50,000 was placed in the electronic monitoring recovery trust fund. In most cases, the judge does not order them to pay electronic monitoring when they're paying regular cost-of-supervision fees.
Mrs Boyd: So there is a regular cost of supervision to any prisoner?
Mr Nimer: Yes, for anybody. Again, that is weighed depending upon your ability to pay. In Florida we stress employment real strong with offenders on community supervision, and eventually if they're employable, we try to get them to work. If they are under the federal poverty guidelines, then they do not pay cost-of-supervision or any other fees.
Mrs Boyd: I see. There seems to be what looks to me to like a fairly substantial number of people whose Community Control or Community Control II end with death. Does that mean that this would be one of the reasons why the court might initially suggest Community Control or electronic monitoring, because someone is in very poor health?
Mr Nimer: The parole commission has used that in a couple of cases, but normally what you're seeing there are actually offenders who died while they were under supervision. I don't know. I have no breakdown to know how many were deathly ill and placed on that as opposed to actually -- I know of several who have been murdered while they were under supervision.
Mrs Boyd: I think that was what I was trying to get at, whether these were natural deaths or whether in fact these were deaths that occurred in the commission of another crime or as a result of their being a sitting duck for someone who was trying to get them.
Mr Nimer: Again, I have no breakdown of that total, 183 individuals. Like I said, I do know of a couple of cases that were actually murdered or in drug deals that went bad and that sort of thing.
Mrs Boyd: So that means that there's nothing in either of these programs that necessarily would prevent someone from dealing in drugs or buying drugs.
Mr Nimer: That's correct. As I said, the department has basically used electronic monitoring as surveillance. You could certainly deal out of your house while you're on house arrest, and in cases that's happened, but we also did about 380,000 drug tests last year on the supervised population. We have a very, very big drug treatment program, and as long as the judge has ordered that they be drug tested, we will eventually catch them under community supervision. But instead of necessarily suggesting that a court send them to prison, we may tell them to put them into one of our community-based programs.
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Mrs Boyd: I see. But the drug testing and alcohol testing are definitely part of this where those are identified problems for these particular convicts?
Mr Nimer: That's correct. Programming is very big in the community-based population here in Florida.
Mrs Boyd: I see. Thank you very much.
Mr Ron Johnson (Brantford): I'm a government member, and I have a couple of quick questions.
Number one, with respect to the electronic monitoring sentencing, you indicated initially that the only individuals who go on the electronic monitoring are those who come through on the sentencing end. With respect to those who could possibly be downgraded, say, from a minimum security facility on to the electronic monitoring program, have you experimented at all in the past with that? If so, what sort of results did you obtain from that?
Mr Nimer: No, we have had no experience whatsoever. There's only about two or three cases that I know of where the parole commission asked us to place that device on them. The Michigan Department of Corrections would probably be your greatest resource. They have a rather large offender release electronic monitoring program. We have no experience in that area.
Mr Ron Johnson: Talking now about the actual disposition of some of the offenders, you indicated you were somewhat shocked at the result; that the electronic monitoring wasn't just simply surveillance but it actually had a positive effect or impact on the offender's disposition. Can you just elaborate a little bit on that and possibly give us a couple of examples?
Mr Nimer: Again, I think we -- when I say "we," those who are in charge in probation programs -- have pretty much taken the position that it doesn't really improve our results. What it did was provide that surveillance. When I say better results, again I'm looking at outcomes, which are violations, those offenders that are reduced probation, and early or normal or court-ordered terminations. When I say there is an 11.3% better result, that means there are more people who favourably finished their Community Control II supervision.
I was rather shocked by that. In theory, you have a higher-risk population because many of those people who are placed on Community Control II have violated regular probation or have violated Community Control. I expected that the numbers would be a little bit worse before they would actually be better.
Mr Ron Johnson: Shifting again to a different issue, have you done any study at all to determine the savings to the state since the implementation of electronic monitoring? Were there substantial savings to the government?
Mr Nimer: In 1988, I believe it was, the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, which is a research group in the United States, came to Florida and did a rather detailed matched group study of those offenders placed on Community Control, those on Community Control II and those placed in prison who have the same sentencing, demographics, priors. They did basically what's called a controlled matched group study.
At that point what they decided was that if you looked at the most stringent definition of the house arrest program, approximately 55% of the people who were placed in this program were true prison diversions, and if you took a less stringent definition, about 85% were prison diversions. When they used the most stringent definition, the cost saving was upwards of $16 million. That was back in 1988.
I venture to say that it would be rather more significant at this point, not due to a specific amount of work on electronic monitoring. But clearly for a price tag of $2.39, we're going to say that we have a tremendous benefit by using electronic monitoring with community control cases.
Mr Ron Johnson: Just one final question, Mr Nimer: You indicated as well that the offender in many cases picks up part of the cost for the supervising and for the monitoring. I find the idea intriguing. I want to know the percentage of offenders who are in a position that they can pick up some of those costs.
Mr Nimer: Approximately 75%.
The Chair: Mr Nimer, we're going to rotate again through the three caucus parties. Each has approximately six minutes left. We'll next proceed back to Mr Ramsay.
Mr Ramsay: I have one question and then I'll cede my questions to one of our colleagues, Annamarie Castrilli.
Mr Nimer, I wanted to ask about public acceptance of your Community Control programs. When you started Community Control I in 1983 and then you graduated on to your second program in 1987, did you start off by putting the variety of offenders you list here -- murderers, sex offenders, robbery, burglary, all these folks, drugs, weapons -- immediately on the community programs, or did you bring them in over time?
Mr Nimer: No. We don't place any of those people on this program. What this program was designed for was non-violent offenders. What happens in the state of Florida -- I think it's important to understand this and then you'll know why there are murderers, robbers, sex offenders and what not in this program -- is that 97% of the cases are plea-bargained in the state of Florida. Only 3% of the cases go to trial.
What happens in many of these circumstances is that we get stuck with people on community supervision, probation and house arrest who reach these plea agreements in the circuit court. In many cases it may be a situation where they don't have enough evidence, they don't have a strong case or they want to settle the case because they don't have the time to go to trial.
We did not ask for these types of offenders to be placed. We essentially asked for non-violent -- a lot of drug offenders, theft, fraud, forgery, other crimes that were non-violent. That was the general type of offender we looked for when the department approached the court. But what happened is that it became a dumping ground for a lot of other cases. Quite frankly, the public in the state of Florida probably does not know the number of offenders in those primary offence categories who are on house arrest.
Mr Ramsay: Just one last question before I turn it over. I'm curious about public acceptance of this program. It must be that it's your low per diem cost to run this program that convinces people it's okay to put some of these violent criminals on an electronic monitoring program.
Mr Nimer: Again, the electronic monitoring is really a small part of it. It really needs to be couched as the house arrest program. We have 15,000 offenders on house arrest; on any given day, only 1,000 are being electronically monitored.
We did a pretty good PR job when the program started in 1983 of having reporters ride with officers, go to offenders' homes. We did community talks, public talks, to tell people about the program, and essentially it's become an accepted part of the criminal justice system in Florida. Remember, we've got 68,000, almost 70,000 people in prison. I think Florida made the decision that they just could not build their way out of the criminal justice problem, and community supervision has become a viable alternative.
Also, believe it or not, when they did the matched group study of those offenders in these same categories who went to prison, we had better results, lower recommitment rates, than the offenders who had gone to prison. So there is some sort of general acceptance for probation and parole and for certain groups of offenders being supervised in the community. However, I don't think anybody believes that murderers and manslaughter cases, sex offenders and robbery offenders should be supervised in the community. Again, if you look at those overall numbers, they're rather small numbers. When you compare, they're probably less than 10% of the entire number of offenders who are placed in the Community Control program.
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Ms Annamarie Castrilli (Downsview): Mr Nimer, I want to be very clear as to the response you gave to my colleague David Ramsay. Did I understand you to say that 97% of the cases that you have are plea-bargained?
Mr Nimer: Ninety-seven per cent of the cases that are disposed of through the circuit court in the state of Florida are plea-bargained.
Ms Castrilli: Is that both Community Control I and II?
Mr Nimer: That's everything. That includes all felony dispositions out of the circuit court. That means people who go to prison, people who are placed on community supervision, Community Control I or II, it doesn't matter. Any felony disposition that is sentenced in the state of Florida, 97% of those are plea-bargained; in other words, do not go to trial.
Ms Castrilli: I'm curious. The figures you have on page 4 that deal with the revocations, you have something in the neighbourhood of 40% that are revoked because of new felony or other reasons.
Mr Nimer: The technical violations make up the biggest. In Community Control I, it's 41.7%, in Community Control II, it's 40%. The total revocations for Community Control I equal 58.9%, for Community Control II equal 54.3%. So over half of the people who are placed in this program fail.
Ms Castrilli: How does that happen with all this electronic monitoring that they have?
Mr Nimer: The electronic monitoring in a lot of ways would show you probably more technical violations. If they leave the house, in theory, we're going to know. But the bottom line is, when you look at these statistics, over half of the individuals placed in this program do not make it, whether they're on electronic monitoring or they're not on electronic monitoring.
Ms Castrilli: They go back to jail?
Mr Nimer: In many cases they do. It all depends on where they score on sentencing guidelines. In some cases they may be placed back into Community Control or Community Control II again.
Mrs Boyd: I think you've caused a little consternation here in terms of talking about plea-bargaining for 97%. I gather what you mean is that they obtain a guilty plea.
Mr Nimer: That's correct.
Mrs Boyd: We're at about 84%, and certainly there's no question that both at the federal level and the provincial level here there's a real encouragement to try and resolve cases without those trials.
Mr Nimer: Exactly, and that's what happens in the state of Florida. So what happens in some cases is you may even find a sentencing guideline score that is plea-bargained.
Mrs Boyd: Sure, and part of that whole process is to ensure that you get a punishment or a sanction that matches the likelihood of someone changing. I assume that's part of what the court is trying for, whereas the defence obviously is trying for something that's least inconvenient to the person.
Mr Nimer: That's correct.
Mrs Boyd: One of the issues for us is that the government has decided to close what we called community resource centres, which were residential facilities where people were supervised and counselled and so on within the community, and the announcement was our replacing this with electronic monitoring. I guess we need to know, do you have such community residential facilities in Florida, and if you do, what kind of results are you getting in the recidivism that we're talking about here in terms of your Community Control program?
Mr Nimer: Yes, we do. We have what's called a non-secure drug treatment program. Now again, I'm going to speak only about front-end supervision: probationers, community controllees and those who are coming into the community at the front end. We have about 1,600 beds around the community. It's a six-month program. The success rate is 54.4%. The recommitment rates are pretty low on graduates. Only about 12.8% of the graduates have been recommitted to a term of Florida incarceration after they've graduated. Generally, those rates probably would be a little bit higher than regular Community Control.
Mrs Boyd: So you consider those community resource beds to be quite an effective way, if people qualify for them. I gather the numbers are fairly similar to your electronic monitoring.
Mr Nimer: They're actually a little bit better. As I just pointed out, 54.3% were revocated in Community Control II and 58.8% were revocated in Community Control I. So at 54.8% success in the non-security, yes, we actually had better results with that program. But it's a very intensive program: two months of a modified therapeutic community and four months of work release and treatment overlay. We also have a long-term program. We don't have near as many beds; we only have about 400 of those beds. We have about 380 probation and restitution centre beds, again about a four- to six-month program. Then we have a multitude of outpatient programs that I think I've already mentioned to you.
Mrs Boyd: So a lot of what makes that program more successful is the kind of intensive work and the support that people get to continue with their program in that kind of a situation; they aren't sort of left alone in isolation and you hope they carry on their program. They're in a situation where in fact the program is offered by people who are right there and who are encouraging them to participate.
Mr Nimer: That is correct, and in most cases, in 95% of those cases, that program is court-ordered by the judge. If they don't comply with that court order, they go back to the course for a revocation.
Mrs Boyd: And that's different from the electronic monitoring where there is a program?
Mr Nimer: The electronic monitoring for the most part is court-ordered. We have the administrative ability to place anybody on Community Control on electronic monitoring; however, we cannot have them revocate it. The judge can't violate him for it unless he ordered it to be placed on. That's a little bit different. Most of the time we tell our folks, "Don't put them on electronic monitoring unless the judge has ordered it," because we can't revocate them if they don't comply.
Mrs Boyd: I see. Thank you very much.
The Chair: We have two, Mr Carr and Mr Tilson, sharing approximately six minutes.
Mr David Tilson (Dufferin-Peel): Mr Nimer, David Tilson speaking.
Mr Nimer: Yes, sir.
Mr Tilson: Do I understand then that most of the people who go on electronic monitoring are as a result of a judicial order as opposed to an administrative order?
Mr Nimer: That's correct.
Mr Tilson: And do I also understand you're saying that -- I made a note; I don't know whether it's true or not -- more than one half fail the process?
Mr Nimer: That's correct.
Mr Tilson: There is a report that came out that indicated there have been a number of lawsuits implemented throughout the United States -- I don't know in Florida -- that were working their way through the system, of people who were concerned with respect to public safety, private lawsuits. Do you know of any of those?
Mr Nimer: As a matter of fact, I was supposed to testify as an expert witness at a trial last week that was settled out of court. This was a case where somebody circumvented the system and committed some rather heinous crimes. That's about the only one I'm aware of in the state of Florida. There may be some similar, if that's what you're referring to.
Mr Tilson: One more question, then Mr Carr will ask you some questions. One of the concerns that has been expressed to me about electronic monitoring is that the process is not as much of a deterrent. In other words, one of the reasons for a deterrent with respect to crimes committed is that you can't go home or that you shouldn't go home. Do you have a response to that criticism?
Mr Nimer: Well, from a personal standpoint, I believe there are appropriate sanctions for all types of offenders and clearly community-based supervision and electronic monitoring to me has a place. I think you have to take a balanced approach. You cannot lock up everybody. It is fiscally impossible to lock up everybody, nor does everyone need to be locked up. I don't know if that answers your question.
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Mr Tilson: Is this system working well, to your knowledge, throughout the United States?
Mr Nimer: I really don't know. Again, the system works for us, because what we're buying again is surveillance, and at $2.39 all we're adding is some additional surveillance of our programs and, in that sense, I'd say, yes, we're getting our money's worth. I can't tell you whether it's working. The only thing, as I said, was astounding is we did see some better results, a little bit better results, with those offenders placed on Community Control II as opposed to regular Community Control.
Mr Tilson: Mr Carr has some questions.
Mr Gary Carr (Oakville South): Are you sure? I didn't want to rush you.
Thank you very much. We appreciate the opportunity to do this by long distance. What is the level of assessed risk of some of the offenders? How do you do that in your system? Would you be able to help us with that?
Mr Nimer: Yes. What we instituted was something I alluded to before, and that's that client-management classification system. That's roughly about an hour, hour and a half interview. We have to train officers 40 hours in this process on how to do that interview properly. The end result of that interview is it puts the offender into five different categories.
You learn quite a bit about the offender. You also learn what type of offender he is. There's one particular group of offenders which are essentially sociopaths -- it's a small group, about 20%, maybe a little bit less than that -- supervised a little bit differently. As soon as they get out of line, the first time, whatever it may be, as insignificant a violation as possible, we go back to court, because we know that this person is not appropriate for community supervision, and that has probably been the most useful tool that we have instituted in this program, because now we know who we're supervising and how to supervise them. Since we've done that, we've noticed an increase in our successful completions of our community control programs. What I would recommend more than anything is the client-management classification system. You then know something, you're able to assess the individual, know what it is they need, know what it is, what danger they may pose to the community as a whole and deal and supervise the case according to that strategy.
Mr Carr: One last quick one: Is it your feeling then that some of the people would've done just as well on the regular probation as they are with electronic monitoring?
Mr Nimer: Yes, in some cases they would've done better. Obviously, the more you supervise a case, sometimes the more likely you're going to find a technical violation. Yes, the more intense you supervise the case, in many cases, the more violations you will have.
Mr Carr: Great. Thank you very much again.
The Chair: We have two minutes per caucus left. I'll go to Mrs Castrilli.
Ms Castrilli: Just one final question, the figures you've given, you've also broken down by age, and I know you state at the beginning that you cannot really tell very much from the outcomes, but I wonder in your experience if you could tell us if there is any distinction between age groups and how they respond to the various types of monitoring.
Mr Nimer: Frankly, we haven't done a whole lot of investigation other than what you see on pages 7 and 8. What we found is what we've always known, that younger offenders don't complete programs as well as older offenders. What was interesting to us, which I thought was rather unusual, is that we have better results with offenders placed on electronic monitoring in the age groups of 17 and younger and 18 to 24, and they were rather significant differences. However, when you back out the active caseloads on those pages, the actual sampling group is pretty small.
In the case of 17 and younger, it's only 204 individuals. In the case of -- again, I'm on page 8, in the category of 18 to 24, it's only 631 versus 1,717 with no electronic monitoring and 6,626 with no electronic monitoring.
Ms Castrilli: Have you done any follow-up to see what happens after their release and if they re-offend?
Mr Nimer: No, we have not. The only thing we do recommitment studies on are our residential treatment programs. We track recommitments on those.
Mrs Boyd: Would you say that the experience you've had -- and I'm sure you've talked to people in other states -- is fairly similar in most jurisdictions, or do you think it depends on the mix of different programs that's offered?
Mr Nimer: I really don't know. I think different jurisdictions use it for different reasons. I'm a big believer in programming. We've spent a lot of years and a lot of time in programming, so I would say yes, it's a combination. But what is interesting again, when you look at these numbers, is to see without looking at programming or any variables, a slight increase of approximately 11.3% with groups with electronic monitoring. I was rather astounded by that.
Mrs Boyd: Would you say the population that is committed to prison as a result of your having available both community resource programs and Community Control programs, both of them, that the population that is actually committed to prison would represent very serious offenders, much more serious offenders than these, and people whose prognosis for being restored or rehabilitated is less for that general group, or is it sort of a toss-up, depending on the court and what the court decides?
Mr Nimer: I really can't answer that question. We know one thing for sure, that yes, the whole idea in Florida was to save the prison beds for violent offenders and attempt to deal with non-violent offenders as much as we could in the community. I think we have been successful. Our prison admissions for drugs have dropped; our admissions to community supervision for drugs have increased; we've poured money into it and we've been successful, let's say, for instance, in reducing the number of drug offenders going to prison. The whole idea is to lock up the bad guys and try to deal with the rest of them in the community. If that's the plan, then you appropriate your resources to deal with it, and that's what we try to do in the state of Florida.
The Chair: That concludes all our questions, sir. On behalf of the committee, may I thank you very much for taking part. You've had some valuable input into our committee's deliberation and I thank you for your cooperation.
Mr Nimer: Thank you very much.
The Chair: Our next witnesses are not yet here, so I suggest a five-minute recess, and we'll reconvene at 25 to 5.
The committee recessed from 1628 to 1635.
OPERATION SPRINGBOARD
The Chair: The next witnesses we will hear are from Operation Springboard, Howard Pearl and Margaret Stanowski. Welcome to the justice committee. I'm pleased you got here early. You're slated for 5, but you have the opportunity to get out early. I would ask you to make your presentation, and perhaps you could leave a little time for various questions from the members of our committee.
Ms Marg Stanowski: That's great. Like the early bird getting the worm, I guess we're getting rewarded today. It's great to be here.
My name is Marg Stanowski. I'm the executive director of Operation Springboard. With me is Howard Pearl, a senior volunteer board member of Springboard. We both appreciate the opportunity to present our organizational views on the closure of halfway houses and the introduction of electronic monitoring.
Operation Springboard has been in existence since 1969 and is a charitable organization dedicated to making our communities safer places in which to live. We work with thousands of offenders each year to prevent the recurrence of crime. Our programs also extend to preventing crime before it occurs.
One of our halfway houses, Glenn Thompson, was closed in October 1995. It was established in 1981 and serviced special-need offenders with physical and developmental handicaps. Our organization is committed to strategies that work in reducing recidivism and we are receptive to the evolution of new approaches in making our communities safer. In this regard, we are not opposed to the introduction of electronic monitoring as a continuum of correctional options and certainly embrace the use of Ontario's LSI to predict offender risk and need. We are adamant, however, in our position that the province has lost an affordable and effective correctional resource by its decision to close halfway houses.
In assessing the question before this committee today, it is helpful to consider two key factors driving Ontario's correctional strategy: (1) Given limited revenue and resources, we need to invest wisely in strategies that will be most likely to bring about long-term community safety; and (2) costly resources such as jails, intensive supervision and treatment should be focused on those who pose the greatest threat to safety.
The closure of halfway houses and the introduction of electronic monitoring cannot be fully rationalized with this correctional strategy. First, let us examine the assumptions made in this decision. Electronic monitoring was introduced to replace halfway houses as a more affordable means to reintegrate offenders serving sentences of less than two years. The decision assumes that these two programs are interchangeable. This is simply not the case. Halfway houses can assess and immediately respond to inappropriate behaviour and attitudes and other dynamic risk factors that will reduce the likelihood of reoffending. Halfway houses represent an instrumental strategy in dealing with the responsible integration of higher-risk and -need offenders.
Research confirms that higher-risk and higher-need offenders will be 50% less likely to reoffend than when released without such reintegrative supports. If the same number of offenders were serviced between the two programs, electronic monitoring is reported to be about 25% of the cost of halfway houses. The system of electronic monitoring can determine that the offender is not where he or she is supposed to be and will alert authorities to this fact.
The level of service and supervision between the strategies cannot, in our opinion, be considered interchangeable. With the decision to replace one intervention with the other, it was also assumed that offenders in halfway houses would qualify for electronic monitoring in that they had good homes to go to and could access needed programs for their problems in the community. The criteria for electronic monitoring, though, are restrictive and cannot consider many of the offenders who were released to halfway houses. I will acknowledge that cautious decision-making, particularly in the last year, was placing offenders in halfway houses who may not have needed this intensive supervision, yet this should not have led to the conclusion that these homes lost their unique value in the offender reintegration process and capacity to reduce recidivism.
Electronic monitoring and halfway houses are far less expensive than jail, which is about $140 per day, and both these strategies can be substantiated in the emerging correctional strategy. The question then becomes, what types of offenders warrant and need these two distinct interventions or a combination of both? For what purpose are we investing in these options: as a purchase to promote safety or to provide alternatives to jail?
Our written brief explains that electronic monitoring has not, in the Canadian experience, been introduced as a standalone model to reintegrate offenders. It is increasingly being utilized as an affordable alternative to jail and to substantiate release of offenders serving very short sentences, say, of about 30 days or less. Ontario, I think you're aware, has about 50% of its inmate populations serving sentences of less than 30 days. Electronic monitoring was not introduced for this purpose but rather to replace halfway houses. The current assessment process for electronic monitoring would limit even its timely use for almost half of the correctional population and, as stated above, could prolong the costly use of custody for those offenders who otherwise would have been considered for release to a halfway house.
We urge this committee to recognize that halfway houses represent a prudent and affordable investment for community safety for offenders who clearly would not qualify for electronic monitoring or parole consideration. Prolonging incarceration for offenders needing supports and daily supervision in their reintegration who will be released ultimately at two thirds of their sentence does not make economic sense, nor will the investment result in more safety for our communities.
Mr Howard Pearl: My name is Howard Pearl. I'm quite pleased to be here and appreciate the opportunity to make my comments before this esteemed committee. I am concerned about the idea of doing away with halfway houses in favour of electronic monitoring.
I'm concerned first as a father and as a homeowner and secondly as a businessman who employs over 100 people in this community and generates approximately $20 million worth of top-line revenue, leaving a considerable deposit in both provincial and federal tax bases. I'm also concerned about the costs versus benefits of this particular plan. As a businessman, I appreciate the value that comes from wise investments. Using a bottom-line analogy, does this government think the capital invested in electronic monitoring will result in more safety? I do not believe that electronic monitoring is a prudent investment in securing the community's safety, as the candidates who will be allowed to participate in this program are usually either low-risk or low-need offenders.
Frankly, I don't think that halfway houses and electronic monitoring are interchangeable. While a bank machine can easily replace a bank teller, I'm not so confident that electronic monitoring or an electronic bracelet can do the same thing. The machine has a default. It simply keeps the cash if it detects a problem. Electronic monitoring can only inform; it cannot predict, nor can it prevent.
You really would be setting up this province, I think, to lose an invaluable resource to provide a reintegration system and reintegration programs to high-risk and high-needs offenders. As a board member of Operation Springboard for over six years, I volunteer my time to support the delivery of programs that will provide the community, including me and my family, with greater safety from released offenders.
The people we're keeping in prisons for longer periods of time and then release at the end of their sentence are the very people we need to supervise. Punishing these offenders by lengthening their incarceration, without any controls upon their release, does not make sense to me. And I want to make it clear that I am not an offender advocate; I am an advocate of a safer community.
Anger management and substance abuse characterize many of these people, who will be allowed to come into our neighbourhoods at the end of their sentence without any process of reintegration. These angry people, unpredictable as they may be, are simply loose cannons in many cases. I ask you, each and every member of this committee, if you want to be or if you want your son or your daughter or your husband or your wife to be the first person an offender sees upon release without any form of reintegration process into this city or into this province. Perhaps they have or have not stopped along the way for a libation, if that's their problem; I don't really know. I do know it concerns me.
I wonder if this committee believes you can exchange human intervention, human observation, interplay and communication for electronic monitoring alone. My sense is that it's a huge mistake and an invitation to a front-page news story.
I wonder also if this committee feels that the government can abdicate its responsibility to the community just because a person's sentence runs out -- just open the door and set someone free with no attempt to deinstitutionalize or reintegrate them. If that's the case, I believe this committee is endorsing the fact that: "It's okay to offend as long as you don't do it while you're in our charge. Once your time has expired, we're not interested in what it is you do."
I'm suggesting that we be a little more realistic and be responsible, meaning that we have the ability to respond properly and invest in the corrections in an appropriate manner that keeps our communities safe. Part of that system is allowing for a period of reintegration of offenders. I thank you very much.
The Chair: Thank you. We'll start the rotation with Mr Ramsay. You have approximately five minutes per caucus.
Mr Ramsay: Thank you very much for making your presentation today. I brought this before the committee because one of the concerns we in the Liberal caucus have is that the government is saying the programming that up till now has been delivered by the CRCs will still be there. When I asked them where's that going to come from, they would rely on the programming that's in the community. But we all know, from all the cutbacks happening, that many of those community groups we've relied on to deliver some of that program are also being cut back. Where do you foresee that these offenders in transition are going to receive this help?
Ms Stanowski: The issue of access to available services is really the crux of this. As I understand, there would be some attempts through correctional officers at the point of discharge to find alternatives to augment and enrich and would become part of the temporary absence agreement in that, "You will accept drug and alcohol treatment."
The difficulty as practitioners in a community-based agency, as you mentioned, is that the infrastructure has become eroded. Community agencies normally do not prioritize intake of correctional clients. They're riskier to accept. Often, the role of the CRC staff and community-based agencies has been to do that advocacy, if you will, to have that client prioritized. Electronic monitoring hasn't been in effect that long yet in terms of the role the correctional officer based in an institution could have in placement of that individual in the community. I'm very concerned about that in terms of access, not only to the availability of those services.
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Ms Castrilli: Thank you very much, Mr Pearl and Ms Stanowski. I'd like to go back to something you said earlier and get some clarification. We've had some evidence before the committee that the cost of electronic monitoring is relatively low. A representative from the state of Florida indicated earlier that it was $2.39 a day. You may have heard that before. I asked him whether they had looked at the rate of reoffence and whether they calculated that into their cost when they looked at the overall cost. You indicated that if you were to look at factors such as that, the actual cost of a halfway house would be 25% of our current monitoring. I wonder if you could elaborate on that and what you mean.
Ms Stanowski: At the beginning of all this, my math was that 400 beds were available within those 25 halfway houses. Those beds were closed down. The assumption was that $3 million to $3.5 million was required for the capital investments for EM and for the correctional officers who are hired at an annual salary.
From how Mr Runciman has described it -- again, I haven't spoken with him; I read his press release -- it would be in the range of about $3 million or so versus $11 million for halfway houses, so I've rounded it off to indicate about that. But that assumes that 400 clients, offenders, are participating. I think you've heard evidence that, what, about 50 have gone through the program, give or take?
Ms Castrilli: About that, yes.
Ms Stanowski: As to the upfront investment right now, you'd probably be looking at a per diem cost of about $400 a day for each person on EM in this province. The curve will go down because our upfront investment is for getting people on line with the system, as I've understood the problem to be.
Ms Castrilli: Mr Pearl, you talked about the very vital function that halfway houses fulfil in anger management and in substance abuse and controlling that and providing a buffer to society. I'm just wondering if you think there are any circumstances in which electronic monitoring would be acceptable.
Mr Pearl: I have no problem with electronic monitoring. My concern is that as the government reduces its funding for halfway houses and as the resource becomes more difficult to access, we're going to become increasingly reliant on electronic monitoring as a substitute. As somebody in a community fraught with problems, I see the electronic monitoring almost as an excuse: "Well, that's fine. We've got a ring around the collar and we don't have to worry about it." That's not the case.
In many ways, this issue is no less important than health care. It is health care. It's the health of this community. It's the health of the people who live and work in the community and keep it vital. I believe there is a place for electronic monitoring in this community and there's probably a number of good uses for it, but not as an either/or solution to the halfway process.
Ms Castrilli: And not at the expense of safety.
Mr Pearl: Absolutely not at the expense of safety.
Mrs Boyd: Thank you very much for coming. I've worked quite closely with the women's community resource centre in my own community and really know, Margaret, that this problem of prioritizing services in a community whose services are usually stretched takes a lot of negotiation. We have that kind of agreement at the battered women's advocacy clinic with our community resource centre, because we knew a high proportion, virtually 100%, of the women who went through that community resource centre had been battered; in fact there was no question but that their victimization had a good deal to do with what was going on.
We also worked with the St Leonard's operation, Egerton Centre, talking to the men in those centres around the violence issues, holding out the hope that they could change their behaviour but that there were certain things that needed to happen.
I really have worked with that kind of thing, and what really strikes me is that the kind of assistance you give and the kind of support that's offered is very different from the occasional supervision envisioned under the electronic monitoring kind of situation.
I expect that's even more so if you'd tell us a little bit more about Glenn Thompson House. This is a group of people who have very special problems and wouldn't do well in the prison system because it wouldn't speak to them about changing their behaviour, but who also wouldn't do particularly well with an electronic monitoring system because there's none of that necessary preventive work. Can you tell us a bit more about that?
Ms Stanowski: Yes. In fact this has been a real serious issue among our colleagues in this field. When you examine the needs of those special offenders, those with developmental disabilities, physical disabilities, who are clearly marginalized and do not enjoy the same access of even mainstream, if you can call them that, offenders -- here was a program designed for that offender in mind and really provided additional supports to promote that reintegrative process, which, as you can appreciate, becomes further compounded when a person with a mental health problem also has a correctional record; it's a double whammy. Add an addiction to that or a dual diagnosis in some areas, and you've got a real management problem.
What we've seen happen through this is that we've lost that form of intervention, not only with other offenders needing that daily supervision and assessment but with those special-needs offenders. We're very concerned about where they will fall. In terms of further cracks within the system, will they be the ones who will be prolonged in terms of their custody stay as opposed to having access to electronic monitoring?
Mrs Boyd: One of the problems is that even having people in that category understand the importance of some of the compliance parts is really quite difficult, isn't it? We hear those working in the criminal justice system, certainly those who work in the jails, talking about the numbers of people as a result of deinstitutionalization both from developmentally handicapped institutions and mental health institutions; that the proportion of those people incarcerated and in the first stages, just in the first instance before they've even been convicted, is growing. Is that your sense, and is it your sense that not having those community supports available is going to exacerbate the problem and make it that much more difficult for those folks?
Ms Stanowski: Very much so. The principle of our brief is that an effective correctional system can have an affordable continuum of options to deal with a variety of issues. This is not about pandering to inmates or to special-needs offenders. It's about investing in their stability so they can become contributing members of this community.
Halfway homes represented a vital link. When you consider the special needs, the issues of illiteracy are just rampant. At any given point, you could have 50% of those clients at Glenn Thompson House who could not read or write, and even getting to a service required supports; if they were looking at a referral, those supports were there for them. We haven't seen how the correctional strategy or framework will evolve so that these offenders are not left further marginalized and further likely to commit another offence.
Mrs Boyd: And they're always going to get out, because when we look at the provincial system, we're looking at a very short time. I think that was your point, Mr Pearl, that we have a group of people in provincial jails who will get out, and you're saying community safety dictates more supervision rather than less.
Mr Pearl: I don't think you can alter behaviour with electronic supervision. Even if you create for them a schedule of rehabilitative programs, you exchange the cost of transportation and the administration of making sure they get there and depart on time, with a place to sleep at night where you can continue to expose them to a positive environment and try to alter some of those behavioural protocols. You simply can't do it with electronic monitoring alone.
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Mr Tilson: Perhaps you can tell us a bit about Operation Springboard, how many people you serve in a year.
Ms Stanowski: I'd be glad to. This past year, we provided service to 9,200 individuals, which included individuals who were on a form of sanction or referral by the court. It includes young offenders; we have six homes for young offenders in this province. We have two specialized homes for individuals with developmental and physical handicaps that are voluntary residences, non-sanctioned, but most of those offenders have been involved in the criminal justice system. Youth employment counselling, non-profit housing, community service orders -- I'm probably forgetting something.
Mr Pearl: Choices.
Ms Stanowski: Choices, yes, our crime prevention program in our elementary school in Scarborough that deals with grades 7 and 8, trying to get to them before they become involved.
Mr Tilson: Are these programs you offer in-house or do you go outside for those?
Ms Stanowski: Our program model is that we have available in our residential programs about four out of seven nights in-house. We have one night for literacy, we have one night for a specialized drug and alcohol presentation, life skills, as well as recreation, so it really is a span of supports as well as brokering those referrals. If a client has specialized mental health problems, we would probably make that referral out.
Mr Tilson: I understand you to suggest that in some cases individuals could be on electronic monitoring and that others should be in the community resource centres or halfway houses. Do I understand that to be what you're saying?
Ms Stanowski: I am stating that the purpose and framework for the introduction, that electronic monitoring would replace halfway houses, we don't consider to be a sound exchange. We consider that electronic monitoring could be further explored, for instance, as in BC, where they're looking at it clearly as an alternative to custody, that the person comes into custody and he's timely released under the electronic monitoring program.
If you examine that strategy to reduce the number of jail cells, that is the only place you're going to find significant savings to reinvest: a cap on jails or a reduction in the number of cells. We're suggesting electronic monitoring, if introduced with that purpose, to shift costs, could be appropriate for inmates serving less than a 60-day sentence, a 30-day sentence. It may well be appropriate for offenders who are in that next stage of transition back into the community, based on a dollar saving as well as appropriateness, assuming the client has a house to live in and has a phone to plug into.
Mr Tilson: What percentage of people who come to you should not be in halfway houses?
Ms Stanowski: We have six homes, eight group homes. Right now, I would say every one of them needs to be where they're at. Occasionally, you'll see a young offender who may not be appropriate. Under the CRC model, given the tragedy of that young police officer who was shot, we've found since that tragedy that the cautiousness in decision-making really became magnified, and releases that may have been previously considered in years prior were not being made any more; you found utilizations being affected, and there were offenders being placed there who were safe bets, for whom the likelihood of reoffending was very slim.
At any given point -- let's thrown a reasonable number -- about 25% perhaps should not have been in those CRCs. Yet my concern, in reading evidence, is that that very fact has been used to indicate that electronic monitoring can thereby be interchangeable. I think the macro picture of it has to be examined.
Mr Tilson: We have been given estimates -- and I agree, estimates -- that the cost of electronic monitoring per diem is $22 and the per diem with respect to halfway houses is approximately $80.
Ms Stanowski: In that range, yes.
Mr Tilson: That takes into consideration that some of the individuals who normally might qualify for halfway houses wouldn't qualify for electronic monitoring. Is that your understanding?
Ms Stanowski: Yes. Under the present Ontario criteria, who can apply is extremely limited. The offenders who were living in the halfway houses very successfully -- we were enjoying about a 92% success rate -- were no longer eligible to apply for electronic monitoring. Mr Tilson: That's what I'm trying to speak to you on and question you on, that the public criticism that has come out is that there are people in halfway houses who shouldn't be there but should be incarcerated, that we've gone too soft.
Ms Stanowski: This is what I hope we're here to do too, to provide some balance. If, for instance, an offender has a two-year sentence and is released at the 15-month point to reside in a halfway house for three months, with assistance to find employment, to deal with his drug/alcohol problem, to assess how he's going to perform in the community --
Mr Tilson: Yes, but you can't do too much, because they're only in there for a short period of time.
Ms Stanowski: Exactly.
Mr Tilson: My final question, and Mr Guzzo has some questions --
The Chair: I'm sorry, Mr Tilson, your time is up. I apologize to Mr Guzzo that we do not have time. That is the allotted time for our caucus.
I'd like to thank Mr Pearl and Ms Stanowski for your attendance before our committee and your input. It's most valuable.
The 4:30 appointment has been rescheduled to 5 tomorrow -- Professor Anthony Doob and Dianne Martin -- and therefore we have concluded our hearings today. We'll adjourn.
The committee adjourned at 1706.