1995 ANNUAL REPORT,
PROVINCIAL AUDITOR
ONTARIO BOARD OF PAROLE
ONTARIO HALFWAY HOUSE ASSOCIATION
ELIZABETH FRY SOCIETY OF TORONTO
ONTARIO ASSOCIATION OF CHIEFS OF POLICE
CONTENTS
Wednesday 28 February 1996
1995 annual report, Provincial Auditor: Ontario Board of Parole
Ontario Halfway House Association
Thomas Allgoewer, president
St Leonard's Society of Canada
Elizabeth White, executive director
Operation Springboard
Margaret Stanowski, executive director
St Leonard's Society of London
Peter Aharan, executive director
Ontario Association of Community Correctional Residences
Arthur Stratton, representative
Elizabeth Fry Society of Toronto
Claire Price, president, board of directors
Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police
Jack Delcourt, chair, legislation committee
STANDING COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC ACCOUNTS
Chair / Président: McGuinty, Dalton (Ottawa South / -Sud L)
Vice-Chair / Vice-Président: Colle, Mike (Oakwood L)
*Agostino, Dominic (Hamilton East / -Est L)
Beaubien, Marcel (Lambton PC)
*Boushy, Dave (Sarnia PC)
Carr, Gary (Oakville South / -Sud PC)
*Colle, Mike (Oakwood L)
Crozier, Bruce (Essex South / -Sud L)
Fox, Gary (Prince Edward-Lennox-South Hastings / Prince Edward-Lennox-Hastings-Sud PC)
Gilchrist, Steve (Scarborough East / -Est PC)
*Hastings, John (Etobicoke-Rexdale PC)
*Martel, Shelley (Sudbury East / -Est ND)
*McGuinty, Dalton (Ottawa South / -Sud L)
*Pouliot, Gilles (Lake Nipigon / Lac-Nipigon ND)
*Skarica, Toni (Wentworth North / -Nord PC)
*Vankoughnet, Bill (Frontenac-Addington PC)
*In attendance / présents
Substitutions present / Membres remplaçants présents:
Cleary, John C. (Cornwall L) for Mr Crozier
Stewart, Gary R. (Peterborough PC) for Mr Fox
Ross, Lillian (Hamilton West / -Ouest PC) for Mr Gilchrist
Clerk / Greffier: Decker, Todd
Staff / Personnel: Poelking, Steve, research officer, Legislative Research Service
The committee met at 1002 in room 228.
The Chair (Mr Dalton McGuinty): Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the standing committee on public accounts.
I understand, Mr Agostino, you have a motion to raise.
Mr Dominic Agostino (Hamilton East): I would like to put forward a motion that the standing committee on public accounts be moved to an offsite location as a result of the labour dispute here at Queen's Park. I'd like to speak to that.
What is happening, of course, as a result of the OPSEU strike puts many of us, on principle, in a very difficult position. As a legislator, an elected official, I have to choose between crossing a picket line or allowing the voice of opposition in committees to go unheard. That is not something I'm very comfortable with; that is not something I enjoy doing. I spoke to the captains on the picket line this morning and they all encouraged us and asked us to go in and sit on committees in order to do our jobs as members of the opposition.
I hate like hell to have to cross a picket line of striking men and women who are out there doing what they are legally entitled to do in the province of Ontario if they choose to do that. It just very much smacks against the principles of collective bargaining, the principles of the rights of strikers, when elected officials have to be forced to cross a picket line in order to come in and do our jobs, and I certainly hope that government members who control this committee will understand that.
Everyone has to make their own choice as to the crossing or not crossing of a picket line. For me, it's very difficult. The men and women I represent in Hamilton East, most of them union members, understand very clearly the need for me to do my job here at Queen's Park and the need for me to represent their point of view at Queen's Park and to do that through a committee.
At the same time, I don't want to be forced into a situation where I have to go against what I believe is fundamentally wrong, and that is to cross a picket line. If it were simply to go into my office, I would not do that, because I can find other places to work out of. But since the committees meet here, I have no choice.
I would ask this committee and members of the government to consider supporting the motion to allow the standing committee on public accounts to move offsite somewhere else and to allow us to carry on our business there without putting most of the opposition members in one hell of a difficult position.
Although we do have the support of the people out there who have allowed us and have said, "Yes, go in and do your job. We want you to go into the committee," it makes it very difficult for me and for many of us, and I would hope the members of the government understand that and would support this motion to move this committee offsite.
Mr Gilles Pouliot (Lake Nipigon): Good morning, members of the committee. Mr Chair, is it appropriate to speak to the motion put forward by Mr Agostino?
The Chair: Yes.
Mr Pouliot: I too, and who wouldn't be, spontaneously this morning was both appalled and shocked at the confrontation -- and I wish to keep it in the context; a confrontation need not be violent. In French we say it's a prise de position. In French we also refer to this kind of endeavour or exercise as action directe, made possible by -- some will say, I've heard it said -- agents provocateurs. The systematic and deliberate action of the present regime, of the régime du jour, makes it possible for us, its brothers and sisters who are out there -- it's uncomfortable to say the least, philosophically unacceptable to some, at best a situation that should not be allowed to take place.
The right of people to organize, the right of people to withdraw their labour in a legal framework is a long-established tradition. Intelligent discontent is the mainspring of civilization. If it had not been for those men and women, we would have to turn the clock back. If there is an opportunity, addressing the resolution, to do things without putting ourselves or putting others under equal state of siege, I think we have, as members of the committee, the right to address the mandate.
We sit on committee, we're elected to do that. But we also have the obligation to seek every opportunity to do so as per the resolution. Imagination -- well, let's say, just plain common sense -- would ask that the committee seek another venue so we can hold our meeting there.
Mr Dave Boushy (Sarnia): I happen to disagree. I think this is our home, this is a public place. The NDP and the Liberals have had governments in the past. They had picketings, and I'm sure the opposition did not leave this building to go somewhere else. If we do this, we're going to set a precedent for other committees. We have been meeting here all this week, the last two days committees met. They had no problem. What's going to happen March 18 if there's still a strike? Should we not all meet as a government to conduct the business of the province? I think it would setting a very dangerous precedent to do that and I would oppose it.
Ms Shelley Martel (Sudbury East): I have to point out to the Conservative members that this is the first time that OPSEU has been on strike in the province of Ontario. Before both previous Liberal and Tory governments did not want to give OPSEU members the same rights as other people who have collective agreements in this province and allow them to exercise their democratic right to remove their labour when there is a legal strike going on.
So in fact the Legislature has not been picketed by its own members before, by its own employees who work here. This is the first time in the history of the province that this has happened. I think all members would feel much more comfortable if we were able to respect what is happening at this point in time and if we were to support the motion that has been put forward by Mr Agostino that we proceed to meet somewhere else. I think that makes good sense. I don't see why you would be so worried about any kind of precedent.
With respect to this being a public place, let me remind you that your government has made it more and more impossible to access this public place since you have been here. So I'm a bit surprised today to hear you use that as an argument as to why we should continue to meet when there's a legal strike going on.
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Mr John Hastings (Etobicoke-Rexdale): First off, I think the principal reason for having our committee meetings here is that this is the Ontario Legislature. This is where committee meetings are held; this is where the public, whatever section of the public, would want to come and make their views known. We have a committee meeting in front of us here today with a list of deputants.
Another fundamental reason we have to remember is that even if we examined hypothetically the possibility of moving offsite, where is the guarantee, where is the agreement going to be worked out in Mr Agostino's motion, unless he's willing to make an amendment to it, that there would be a written agreement between OPSEU and this committee and/or other committees in terms of where the site would be and that they wouldn't picket it? How are we going to manage the costs of this alternative site if we're going to consider all these possibilities?
A third practical consideration we have to examine very carefully is that this committee in and of itself, as I understand it, would not be able to make a decision to move to another site today but could only consider the possibility of moving to another site, because all the other committees would have to look at this situation in terms of when they sit. It's not just this particular committee that's impacted by this legal strike.
I will move that we refer this particular item for consideration to the Speaker, because I don't think, as I understand it -- I stand perhaps incorrectly informed on this -- any specific committee of the Legislature can in and of itself make independent decisions that would affect other committees of the Legislature in the way in which they operate.
All those particular things have to be looked at carefully in terms of how we carry on the public's business. So I would refer this motion for consideration to the Speaker or to you to take to the Speaker and the other committee Chairs as to whether in fact this alternative proposal that Mr Agostino is proposing ought to be examined.
The Chair: From the learned advice of my good counsel here, I understand that, in effect, you're not speaking directly to this motion at this time. This is what's on the table now; we have to address this.
Furthermore, as I understand it, this committee is in control of where it sits and when it sits, subject to the general agreement of the House leaders. For instance, the committee took it upon itself to decide that we were going to visit outside of the precinct; that was something we were going to do this afternoon. It's not on, but that's something that we decided we were able to do. For that reason, I don't think it's appropriate that this be referred and I think we have to deal with the motion as it is right now on the floor.
Mr Hastings: Would the Chair like to see the specific section that the clerk has which deals with independent action this committee or any other committee can take? The Legislative Assembly committee could not go to Ottawa or Quebec City to deal with the security before there was a prior arrangement with the House leaders, so the House leaders' agreement doesn't come into operation in this particular regard. But I'd like to actually see or have Mr Decker read the specific part of the standing orders that allows this committee to act in an independent fashion and which does not impact other committees of the Legislature.
The Chair: The clerk is checking on that right now.
Mr Agostino: Mr Chair, can we in the meantime not go to the first one and then proceed with that, because that would take precedence, pass to the vote and take it at this place on the first motion?
The Chair: Yes.
Mr Hastings: So what is your ruling, Mr Chair?
The Chair: I think, notwithstanding my ruling on this, Mr Hastings, that Mr Agostino's motion has to be dealt with now.
Ms Martel: Recorded vote.
Ayes
Agostino, Cleary, Colle, Martel, Pouliot.
Nays
Boushy, Hastings, Ross, Skarica, Stewart, Vankoughnet.
The Chair: The motion is lost.
Mr Hastings, do you still require an answer with respect to the query you raised earlier?
Mr Hastings: Yes, I'd like to have that on the record.
The Chair: Standing order 121(a) provides as follows: "Standing and select committees may adjourn from place to place in Ontario."
Now we can move on with the presentations.
1995 ANNUAL REPORT, PROVINCIAL AUDITOR
ONTARIO BOARD OF PAROLE
ONTARIO HALFWAY HOUSE ASSOCIATION
The Chair: Today we're considering section 3.18 of the 1995 Annual Report of the Provincial Auditor, specifically dealing with the Ontario Board of Parole. If I could call upon those persons representing the Ontario Halfway House Association. Welcome to the committee. I understand we were scheduled to hear from you at 9:30, but there was some misunderstanding with respect to the starting time, and there was a matter which we obviously had to deal with first. Now that has been dealt with, I welcome you to the committee. I ask you to put your name on the record for us and then proceed with your presentation.
Mr Thomas Allgoewer: Good morning. I'd like to thank the committee for having me here this morning. My name is Thomas Allgoewer, and I am president of the Ontario Halfway House Association. This is an association of non-profit agencies contracted by Correctional Service Canada to provide mostly residentially based services and some community-based programs to the federal offender. There are 36 member agencies operating in 22 different Ontario municipalities and more than 1,000 community volunteers involved in our programs. This includes people at the board level as well as working on the front lines.
Essentially, these services are involved in the integration and rehabilitative work because they recognize that offenders originate in our communities and they will return and frequent our streets, our neighbourhoods, our workplaces, be clients at businesses, perhaps visit our homes or even live in our homes once they are released. Though all federal offenders will not necessarily return to the community -- a small group probably won't -- all provincial offenders will, and in a very short time, even if they are not paroled. This community -- I'm speaking about the community that is represented by the Ontario Halfway House Association and its volunteers -- has taken a huge interest and responsibility to see that the likelihood that they reoffend is reduced. We represent a community that has taken this social responsibility very, very seriously.
My purpose today is to give an account of some ideas from our experience that could be applied to increase the effectiveness of the Ontario Board of Parole. My basic argument is that the performance of the Ontario Board of Parole is only as effective as the community-based programs it releases offenders to. My assumption is that the Ontario Board of Parole or another gradual release board, which is what we would recommend the board be reconstituted to form, would probably like a range of options, including residency, available as a condition of parole, as the National Parole Board presently has.
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Generally speaking, halfway houses are secure, controlled environments wherein counselling and programming can achieve much better results than in institutions. In general, what the Ontario Board of Parole needs is the knowledge and confidence that specific agencies and programs have the internal policies and practices that are consistent with achieving good results, especially with high-risk offenders who will be returning to our communities, and that they have qualified personnel with the means to constantly train and retrain their staff and improve their program design.
First what I'd like to do is identify some of the basic security features in halfway houses that serve to protect communities and society. These are not commonly known. Halfway houses have been referred to as subsidized housing, and we beg to differ very strongly with that statement.
Halfway houses provide essential contexts for controls, enabling offenders to reintegrate and rehabilitate in the community. Some of the basic security features in halfway houses include the following:
They very carefully screen and assess applicants. Halfway houses endeavour to ensure that residents are committed to participating in programs and are motivated to succeed.
Although there are a small group of houses that may support offenders who do not fit in anywhere else but already have been released or inevitably will be released, they're providing some additional structure and services to resourceless offenders on the streets or returning to the streets shortly.
Halfway houses liaise with the local police and with parole officers. They verify the presence of all residents with regular counts after curfew. They enforce strict curfew and leave privileges. They carefully monitor all parole board restrictions, conditions and perform special security tasks such as urinalysis testing.
They closely monitor general behaviour and attitude. They confront residents' negative behaviour and viewpoints with the intent of modifying them. They support, encourage and reward positive behaviour and attitudes so as to reinforce the positive, and they apply a range of consequences to correct inappropriate or non-compliant attitudes and behaviour. Consequences of inappropriate behaviour could lead to the agency withdrawing support and may result in parole suspension.
These are just basic security features. I haven't even begun to talk about programs that address criminogenic need, but these are generally features that you can find in most halfway houses, and I think already it's clear that this is not simply subsidized housing.
I want to talk a little bit now about programming and training. I believe that the next presentation, which is fully endorsed by the OHHA, may indicate some of the research that shows that the most effective correctional treatment programs which are intended to reduce future reoffending are located in the community. Institutions have been described by correctional staff as behavioural deep freezes, where behaviour is unlikely to change much despite programming, in part because it is too intimidating an environment to practise new ways of interacting with other people.
In the auditor's report mention is made that only 3% of the 40,000 inmates serving less than six months received parole hearings. Furthermore, Ontario placed only 12% of the inmates on register in its institutions and community programs compared to 38% for Quebec. With the closure of provincial halfway houses, one can assume the situation has only further deteriorated.
Clearly, this situation does not appear to meet the purpose of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, which is the maintenance of a just, peaceful and safe community by means of decisions on the timing and conditions of release that will best facilitate the rehabilitation of offenders and their integration into the community as law-abiding citizens.
The OHHA thus also endorses the John Howard Society's earlier recommendation that the responsibility of temporary absence and parole should be exercised under the authority of a single gradual release board, and again to repeat what I mentioned, that one of the options as a condition probably should be residency in a halfway house.
I'd like to add that there is now research available that sets out objective criteria for assessing program elements for risk reduction. Mr Don Andrews of Carleton University has compiled the Correctional Program Assessment Inventory. It sets very high standards for designing and delivering effective services. This can be residential or non-residential. It indicates that staff need a high level of education, training, relevant experience, length of stay, clinical skills etc.
What small private agencies need is ongoing training and support to assist them with innovating interventions and implementing programs that reduce risk better. This would indirectly increase the effectiveness of the Ontario Board of Parole.
With the financial assistance of CSC, to give a federal example, the Canadian Training Institute was established specifically to provide this kind of service. Unfortunately, access to it remains rather limited these days because of budget cuts, the lower release rates federally and so on.
Some of the savings achieved by a higher community release rate should be used on providing more training opportunities and support services to agencies attempting to improve their own program design to reduce reoffending among higher-risk offenders.
I just want to mention very briefly that educating the public is of critical importance for the field of corrections, justice and so on. Despite our best efforts and excellent results, there will be failures. Some of them will likely be sensational and tragic, and there will be public outcries when such situations arise. At times like these we have to remember our overall successes and review the whole system realistically and not emotionally. We must take the opportunity to see where we can improve. We must also ensure that the public is educated about the criminal justice system.
One of the central findings of research on public attitudes towards criminal justice is that, when provided with more information than is usually conveyed by the average newspaper article, the public responds with sophistication and flexibility regarding criminal justice policies. Educating the public is a major challenge for the correctional system, one to which it should dedicate greater resources.
So, overall, to sum up, my recommendations would be that the ministry implement the following practices to improve the effectiveness of the Ontario Board of Parole at making decisions about the timing and conditions of release of offenders that facilitate the rehabilitation and reintegration.
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First, the ministry should ensure that all agencies delivering community programs have adequate but not too restrictive, internal security policies and procedures.
Secondly, a single gradual release board be set up with authority over both temporary absences and parole.
Thirdly, more resources be dedicated to provide agencies, staff, training and support services to increase their effectiveness at designing and implementing programs that reduce risk.
Fourth, more resources be dedicated to providing public education. Thank you.
Mr Pouliot: Thank you very much and good morning. I certainly value the quality of your time and your expertise. You would be familiar, referring to A Blueprint for Justice and Community Safety in Ontario, New Directions, volume 3, on page 24 -- this is what the government said: "By combining stricter supervision with more cooperation and support to private sector initiatives such as the John Howard and Elizabeth Fry societies, more offenders are likely to be successfully integrated back into society." This is what they said. They issued an opinion but they also have the mandate to go beyond an opinion, if you wish. That's their direction. I have some questions.
Were you consulted? You're the person on the street; you're the expert in the field; you, along with others. Did the government consult your organization before they did chop or cut the funding for halfway houses?
Mr Allgoewer: There was, to my knowledge, no consultation whatsoever. It was very difficult to have access to any of the higher ranking officials to talk about our views.
Mr Pouliot: This morning my name is Gilles Lunchpail Citizen. As a result of what was done, should I be concerned, grosso modo, about public safety in general?
Mr Allgoewer: I believe that you should be. I believe the public should be very concerned about the closing down of community correctional programs. It's in the community where programs are most effective and where the offender who is taking those programs actually has the chance, without having to fear what other inmates will think of him and so on, to try and implement those in the street when he encounters the average person. He can't do that in an institution.
Mr Pouliot: Quite often, when decisions are made, it parallels life in general, it's a tradeoff. Some people where I come from want to cut all the trees, other people don't want any trees to be cut, and in there, some accommodations are being made. So because they've cut funding for some 400 beds, what impact does that have on the parole system? Are they holding back on parolees, fewer people? Or are more people reincarcerated? Surely you can't have it both ways. If you cut on the one hand, there have to be some consequences.
Mr Allgoewer: I'm not completely sure what has happened to parole in Ontario but I know the other way of gradually releasing people through temporary absences has been reduced very, very significantly. It was on temporary absences that people got programs and halfway houses.
Mr Pouliot: I have one last question and my colleagues will have some relevant supplementaries. It doesn't have to be to the penny or the dollar, but if someone wants to save money, what's the cost of an individual under the auspices of a halfway house vis-à-vis the same individual being in jail?
Mr Allgoewer: Again speaking only about federal halfway houses, the average cost is around $59 per day per person. My understanding is that to keep a person in an Ontario prison is approximately $134 a day. There shouldn't be any reason why provincial houses don't operate at around the same figure, somewhere in the $60 range per diem.
Mr Pouliot: Not much common sense. Maybe you're too nice to say this and I appreciate the courtesy, but it doesn't seem that there is much common sense to this kind of endeavour.
The Chair: That's not a leading question, by the way.
Mr Pouliot: No, I come here with candour.
Mr Allgoewer: I'm here because I strongly believe that community corrections is very important and you can accomplish the most in terms of changing offenders' attitudes and behaviour by dealing with them in the community, by operating programs in the community for them. That reduces recidivism and that reduces the costs of not just keeping a person in jail for that period but the costs of policing and of courts and whatever other costs there are. There are a lot of costs associated with people recidivating, committing new offenses.
Mr Hastings: Mr Allgoewer, thank you for coming today and making your thoughts known regarding the issue facing us on this committee. I wonder if you could elaborate on whether your organization and your members have a code of ethics dealing with people released from the institutional setting. Secondly, you talked about levels of security in halfway houses, or whatever term might be more suitably used to describe those operations. Do you have specific levels of security that all your members adhere to? You mentioned in your presentation about the way in which you try to secure these folks until they're completely or nearly rehabilitated.
Mr Allgoewer: Yes, Correctional Service Canada about 10 years ago did some national consultation with community groups, other experts in the field, and they put together a standards manual for halfway houses. We continue to get audited on the standards that are in the manual. They're part of our contract. They address a lot of issues, including safety and security issues, and we have to continuously demonstrate that we're meeting those requirements.
Additionally, those are generally sort of minimum requirements. Halfway houses are run by different community agencies that have their own internal standards. The Salvation Army may have different standards for correctional programs than does St Leonard's or Elizabeth Fry. They may add to those in certain ways, or the house director may have even stricter criteria because the target group may be different. But all of them have security and safety procedures. We all recognize that you cannot run programs without controls being in place with these ex-offenders.
Mr Hastings: You also alluded to the point in your recommendations that more resources are required to keep folks from becoming recidivists or even having new folks enter the situation because of a whole complex set of social causes.
When you allude to "more resources," and our spending envelope is the same or less, I'd like to hear what you would have to say about -- even though you haven't mentioned it in your brief -- whether in fact you would recommend, one way or the other, whether this government ought to look at folding the Ontario Board of Parole into the federal system, as at one time was being considered earlier, when we were elected last June. I don't think the thing has been resolved in the long term yet, even though there have been recent appointments to the parole board. Whether in fact if we have less moneys to spend or we're going to get more value out of what we've got left, would we be doing anybody a favour or advancing public policy by having parole hearings done federally, and reduce the duplication overall?
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Mr Allgoewer: I guess my feelings are, and figures seem to suggest, that the Ontario Board of Parole pays for itself by the savings that are received from releasing people and not having them in institutions. If more people were to be released from provincial institutions on some kind of gradual, conditional release, then there's a potential for even more savings. If the 38% were achieved like Quebec, I think there would be a lot more money available to improve programs in the community that will reduce recidivism. That again will lead to a lot more savings to the government.
There should be more money made available to community-based programs like us that just barely have enough money to operate the programs, so that we can continuously benefit from the research. There's a lot of research going on in this field that shows how one can reduce recidivism further and how to design programs. I don't think it would take a lot of money to subsidize the Canadian Training Institute, as an example, to better serve our needs in program design so again we can be more effective at reducing recidivism. We're not talking millions of dollars here; we're talking $10,000, $15,000, maybe $50,000 to really improve programs, update them, bring them in line with what the research says is the direction.
Mr Hastings: So is that a yes, that we should look at folding the Ontario Board of Parole into the federal?
Mr Allgoewer: No, I haven't spoken to that matter at all. It seems to me that, as they currently exist, they are achieving their mandate. I think they feel that they can do more, looking at the auditor's report. I don't think that the OHHA has really any strong opinions whether there should be one board or the Ontario Board of Parole continues to exist, so long as whoever that group is does a good job releasing people and is allowed to do that.
Mr Agostino: A couple of points to get to questions. When this government moved to basically eliminate the funding of the halfway houses in the province, I would presume that some of that was based on the fact that there were some difficulties and that possibly the criteria may have been the problem: Who gets into a halfway house or at what stage to get in there and what happens once they get there. Of course, rather than trying to tighten up the eligibility or review the eligibility process, they just decided to do the simplest thing, which was get rid of them, which I agree was a mistake.
There was some room for improvements, but you don't destroy and dismantle the system to bring about those improvements; you fix it and you address it. I think they failed miserably in doing that. We now have a system that is going to allow individuals to go right from the jail system into the community without any integration. If they think that is not going to lead to further recurrences, I think they'll be quite surprised what will happen. That is one point.
I want you to comment on that in a minute if you can. The second is the screening process, the eligibility process, and whether that in your view needs some review and whether there are some ways of trying to make that system a little better.
The second aspect is a concern in my community. I've mentioned this before and I'm going to try to mention it to many of the groups that come forward, to get their view on this. We've had a number of incidents in Hamilton-Wentworth of individuals who have been released, particularly around the area of sexual offenders as it involves children, where there have been a number of cases of repeat offenders, of individuals who have been out, in halfway houses in the community, with some fairly strict orders in regard to staying away from parks or areas where children were, and have basically broken those orders. They have been out there, in some cases have reoffended, and in some cases have been nabbed before they reoffended.
I've always believed very much police should have the authority to make a judgement call without fear. As it now stands, the police, in a sense the police services board -- the legislation is still reliable when they take the action of approving, or of a police chief approving, an individual picture or name being released, if they're going to be released in a community, to warn the community that there's a potential danger.
That's always been a difficult issue, but I very much believe that when that happens, when the police department feels it's in the best interests of that community to warn the community that such an individual is being released to a halfway house, or has been released on parole, they often could choose to release the picture and the details of that particular individual, which I think serves to protect the community.
Certainly I hope this government, and we've talked about it before, will move to give the police that authority without the liability aspect that is now there. I think all they're waiting for is a direction from this government to be able to do it and you'd see more of that.
I'd like your views on those, first of all on the screening process for eligibility in releases, and secondly, on the aspect of giving the police the authority and the power to release pictures and names of individuals, particularly of sexual offenders where you know the risk or rate of recurrence is very high, if the police feel they're a threat to the community. How would you view those two?
Mr Allgoewer: First of all, about changing criteria, I don't think the criteria need to be tightened up in terms of eligibility to conditional release programs, houses or other programs. Each case always needs to be reviewed. We need to look at the merits of the individual case, and some board, a gradual release board or the Ontario Board of Parole, has to use the tools it has available to exercise its mandate and make the best possible judgement decision. Individual programs need to make sure that appropriate people get to their programs. Programs are different. They need to have sound criteria. So it's important those two processes be allowed to take place.
Generally, my feeling is that we have a situation now where we need more releases into the community, not less, and I think tightening criteria is not, in the long-term, going to accomplish anything. Maybe there need to be some better assessments of individuals, but I don't think tightening the criteria is going to serve any real purpose in the long-run.
On your second question, just remind me, please.
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Mr Agostino: It was about giving the police department more flexibility than it now has in releasing names and pictures of individuals who have been either paroled or are in halfway houses in the community, particularly as it involves high-risk sexual offenders and repeat offenders with children.
Mr Allgoewer: My feeling is that the police need to work together with Correctional Services, with the National Parole Board or with the Ontario Board of Parole so that they don't work at opposite ends. You have to really look. If this person is going to be released because he's close to the end of a sentence or he's going to be released on parole, you have to look at what's going to reduce the likelihood of that person reoffending. I'm not sure that broadcasting to the public at large that this particular person is coming out is necessarily going to accomplish a lot, but I think certain people knowing where he's going to be and monitoring him there, key people being aware, is very important.
We're also talking here about a very small group of offenders who may always be dangerous, and that very small group -- I will give a written submission as part of my overall submission when I do that. The Ontario Halfway House Association has published a positional statement that basically says we don't feel everyone in the federal system ultimately should be released. There is a small group of people for whom that just may not be appropriate, and we recognize that. We acknowledge that. We're not advocating conditional release for every single federal offender in the system. I think we're more sophisticated and knowledgeable than that.
Mr Agostino: In Hamilton, we saw where the police made the decision. They recommended against a release. It was done. They made the decision at that point to release the picture and the information on the individual. That individual, as a result of that, was recognized by a parent in a park, totally against the order and the conditions, so that individual was arrested and charged as a result of that. Had that not occurred, that individual would have been roaming around that park. This is where I think it can play a positive role.
Mr Allgoewer: That's an example of where it did.
Mr Agostino: That's where the police made the call and it worked out for the benefit of the community. The parents would recognize and take appropriate action with the police at that point, and this is where I think we --
Mr Allgoewer: It's a very difficult call and I don't have a real position on that particular situation.
The Chair: Mr Allgoewer, thank you very much for your presentation.
ST LEONARD'S SOCIETY OF CANADA
OPERATION SPRINGBOARD
ST LEONARD'S SOCIETY OF LONDON
ONTARIO ASSOCIATION OF COMMUNITY CORRECTIONAL RESIDENCES
The Chair: The next presentation is going to be made by a group of presenters: Ontario Association of Community Correctional Residences, Ontario Halfway House Association, St Leonard's Society of Canada and Springboard.
Ms Elizabeth White: I am Elizabeth White, executive director of the St Leonard's Society of Canada. On behalf of the St Leonard's Society and my colleagues who are with me today, I thank the committee for the invitation to make comment concerning the auditor's report on parole in Ontario and to respond to any questions you may have for us. It's my pleasure to introduce to you the comments found in the brief which we have prepared and will present to you this morning.
With me today are Margaret Stanowski of Operation Springboard, Peter Aharan of the St Leonard's Society, and Arthur Stratton, who speaks on behalf of the Ontario Association of Community Correctional Residences. Mr Allgoewer's association is also associated with the brief we bring to you today.
Each will speak with you concerning specific matters in order that the committee will receive as broad a perspective on the issues presently before you as we can do for you today. Ms Stanowski will speak to the issue of accountability and some of the matters which were raised during your January 31 hearings, Mr Aharan will be speaking of special-needs populations and Mr Stratton will discuss the continuum of care precept which has been raised in questions earlier this morning. Each of us will be pleased to respond to any questions you may have either during our comments or at the conclusion of our remarks.
We have chosen to present our comments collectively to most efficiently provide to you the opportunity of hearing from some of the broad spectrum of community-based service providers on the important matters you are presently considering.
The group that is here is not, as you well know, an exhaustive representation of the community-based criminal justice agencies in Ontario. Our numbers include both the John Howard Society, which made presentation in January, and the Elizabeth Fry Society, which is scheduled to appear before you next week and whose executive director in Ontario, Elizabeth Forestell, is also here this morning. Both of those organizations have taken part in the discussions which led to the presentation of our brief.
We believe that this presentation will complement the comments of both Mr Stewart and Ms Forestell, as we bring to you with this presentation a focus on the availability of and need for cost-effective and efficient -- both in terms of the use of fiscal and human resources and in terms of the production of a safer society -- programs and services in the criminal justice field in Ontario. I emphasize the term "safer society" because it is one which will be repeated often this morning. It is our goal, as it is the goal of our colleagues in police and corrections, that we should all live in as safe an environment as is possible. We provide through our programs some of the components which enable our society to be a safer place than it would be without the services which community agencies bring to Ontario.
Who are they? We are the representatives of community-based responses to the need for communities to be involved in the criminal justice system. The involvement is necessary in order that the system may better reflect the concerns of our communities and respond to our communities' needs for services which promote crime-free living. It is our common conviction that without the active participation of the community in the criminal justice system, the goal of a safe society is made both more difficult and more fiscally expensive to attain.
Our community-based organizations exist to make communities safer. We do not purport to have an exclusive on the mechanisms that have that result. What we do have is the ability to creatively respond to the changing needs for safety in our communities. We have that ability because we are volunteer-based, volunteer-governed, and our volunteers are part of our community. Our foundation lies in volunteerism and our continuance is based on volunteer activity and commitment. Individuals come together in community-based corrections to support an effective response to criminality. They are successful to the extent of their interventions.
Allow me to briefly describe for you the St Leonard's Society of Canada to set a context for my participation in this presentation. St Leonard's is an affiliate-based organization which exists to support community agencies in their efforts to provide programs and services which make Canada safer by efficiently and effectively assisting people to live free of crime.
St Leonard's began in Windsor, Ontario, where it pioneered the concept of halfway house living for men who had been incarcerated in the federal system. Community volunteers determined the need for the service based on the difficulties men had in returning to their home communities after a period of incarceration. An examination of their needs indicated that community-based supports could have a positive impact on the returnee's ability to integrate with society.
In 1962 a house was opened that provided the first of the structured responsive program opportunities that Mr Allgoewer was describing to you earlier this morning. The purpose was to assist the interested offender -- I highlight "interested offender" -- to make a successful transition to living independently in the community. The success of the program has been reaffirmed many times over in other communities across Canada as the model of structured community living was adopted to give people the chance to establish themselves and live productively again in society.
St Leonard's has sponsored the creation of a variety of community responses to criminality as the numbers of persons sentenced to long periods of time has grown and men who have been separated from society for decades began returning to an unrecognizably altered society. St Leonard's developed a program specifically designed to address their needs. This program, Lifeline, is now being reviewed for implementation across the country.
With such services, the St Leonard's affiliates and many other community-based organizations provide the community component to the effective integration of former offenders within society. Because the people who use our programs and services come to us by choice, they are inclined to take advantage of the proven successful services that are made available to them throughout Ontario. One of those services is to help people prepare for their parole process.
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Others have identified, and our brief repeats with appropriate research data, the facts of the parole system currently in place in Ontario: the context of the under-two-year sentences for which this province is responsible; the brief window of opportunity, rarely more than a few months, for certain individuals to demonstrate their preparedness to be released on a structured program in society and to receive the assistance they require. Parole's value lies in its effectiveness in assessing timing and conditions of that form of release as is set out in its legislative mandate. One of the significant values of the organizations represented before you this morning lies in their ability to provide programs and services which support conditional releases approved by either the parole board or, in the case of temporary absences, by the superintendents of one of the provincial prisons.
I noted that when Mr Griffin spoke before you on January 31, he referred to problems inherent in systems which release offenders without due follow-up or supervision. We agree that for those offenders who indicate higher needs, and they do exist in Ontario, appropriate program provision results in reduced recidivism. The simple holding of individuals apart from society does not buy much safety for its horrendous fiscal and human cost. To simply set aside people for periods of time averaging 79 days for men and 53 days for women at a cost of $132 a day or more when the money could be allocated to far longer-term programs of supervision in the community doesn't meet a cost-effectiveness test at all. Ontario gets more safety for less money in both the short and the long term when it allocates its tax dollars to structured, community-based releases than it does for using incarceration of persons for whom imprisonment does not contribute to their development of a crime-free lifestyle.
In our brief you will note reference to the English experience, which indicates that it requires a 38% increase in imprisonment to achieve a 1% decrease in criminal activity. The experience in the United States has yielded comparable results. We do not build a safer Ontario, a more successful Ontario, if we address criminality by warehousing those who are the source of our problems for a few months and then returning the same individuals to the streets with no improved methods of contributing to society, without the skills people need to live crime-free.
The words of the then Dutch Minister of Justice cited in our brief remain as true today as when he spoke them in 1988. I draw them to your attention:
"Imprisonment has always fallen and will always fall short of expectations.
"As a means of revenge of retribution it fails; as a deterrent it is ineffective; as a way of protecting society it has proven to be unsuccessful; as a means of converting people it fails; as a therapy it fails; as an instrument of social rehabilitation and resocialization it shows only poor results."
To get rid of parole, to reduce options for offender management in the community would, in our submission, be counterproductive.
Our position then is that conditional release, with its attendant safeguards, is a necessary component of a successful criminal justice system. It is an appropriate use of our resources, both fiscal and human. Firstly, it is cost-effective; secondly, it contributes to community safety; thirdly, it allows the efficacy of program and treatment interventions to be effected in the most successful manner possible; and fourthly, it encompasses a variety of responses with the flexibility to meet the changing needs of our society.
We turn first to the cost-efficacy issue. The fact is that the greater the static security interventions you use, the more it costs in daily dollars. We know that it costs $132-plus per day to imprison and we know that the cost of community intervention is approximately one fifth of that amount. Some will say that we must incur the cost of imprisonment to give our society protection, and indeed there are some individuals for whom some form of physical separation from society is a requirement for some period of time. But we're talking here of people whose maximum length of sentence is two years less a day. All of the people under your mandate are going to be coming back to the streets very soon.
Is the cost of imprisonment a good use of your resources, our resources? What safety are we buying with the dollars? Research finds that at least 75% of those in Ontario jails are not convicted of crimes of violence, yet the Ministry of the Solicitor General and Correctional Services spends about 80% of its $361-million budget keeping them locked up for a few months. That stat's a couple of years old; it's more than that now, I do believe. We believe that the greater part of that money would be much better spent enabling these individuals to become law-abiding contributors to society. Financial resources are scarce. It is prudent that the ministry allocate moneys to proven risk-reduction strategies for individuals of higher needs and higher risks. It is not useful to pay the tremendous expense of keeping people in jails when the short- and long-term expenses will both be less if they are in a supervised community setting. Our Ontario Court of Appeal has said so often that it is now trite law to say that the best protection for the public is the rehabilitation of the accused. You don't win if people keep going back in. You don't win if the law keeps getting broken.
Turning to community safety next, the organizations before you today are committed to building safer communities. Our members, our supporters across this province, know that we make our communities safer when we reduce the risk of recidivism. This is not in isolation, of course. We support the need for early interventions and wellness of children as integral to the safety of our future. But today we speak in the context of conditional release mechanisms as they relate to our safer communities.
Parole is about deciding when and on what terms a person can best return to their community. Provided we are only keeping in prison -- and it's a big "provided" -- those who need a time of separation from society and we're not wasting our time on those who will not offend again anyhow or who are at very low risk of doing so, then parole has a significant role in assessing the type of program and the best form of supervision to result in a crime-free future for an offender. It is in that future that we build our community safety. If Ontario decides that it's not going to use its resources to strengthen the ability of its citizens to be law-abiding, then it is simply investing in a more dangerous, less good future for all of its citizens. The result would be an unnecessary decline in both productivity and personal safety.
Program and treatment interventions are the third matter that I noted. Effective programs reduce recidivism. Ontario gets decreased costs and greater safety when it uses good correctional treatment options. The research has now been growing over a 20-year period. The results are not in dispute. The percentage of efficacy may vary; the principle does not. Our brief refers to some of the more noted research papers available in Ontario on this point, many of which were commissioned by the Ministry of the Solicitor General and Correctional Services.
Four points need to be made in support of this aspect of our presentation.
The first is that without structure and encouragement, individuals in conflict with the law might not choose to seek out treatment. Therefore, treatment as a component of a release plan is more effective than simply giving someone a list of community resources that are supposedly accessible when they walk out the prison door. I say "supposedly accessible" because it is our common experience that many purportedly available resources are simply not available for persons with a criminal record, whatever form that criminal record may take.
The second point is that treatment works better in the community than it does in prison. Mr Allgoewer referred to this already this morning. On examination, it's not hard to see why this would be the case. Prisons are not a usual setting. They may be termed asocial. The longer persons are inside prison, the less is their ability to function on the outside. For one thing, the outside is just changing too fast. There clearly is a prison culture and it does not relate well to living at large. Program and treatment delivered in a prison are delivered and received in this artificial atmosphere. Treatment remains most effective when it's delivered in a controlled but realistic setting in the community.
Thirdly, treatment and program are most effective when they address the criminogenic factors displayed by an individual. The experience and expertise of the various forms of conditional release available in Ontario today are capable of targeting those aspects displayed by released offenders which have been identified as most likely to lead to criminality.
Fourth, treatment works best with people who have high need. Expensive interventions for low-need individuals are not best practice. We must reserve our resources for those whose indicators are that they are in need of intervention. We have the tools available to us in the criminal justice system now. Ministry staff and board are trained in their use and interpretation. The community resources are well aware of their impact. The system is capable of targeting programs to those in need without undue wasting of program dollars.
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The fourth aspect we wish to bring forward today is the flexibility of responses and alternatives that are currently available to the releasing authorities. We oversimplify if we expect that any one response to crime will result in a safer, more cost-effective system. The community-based organizations that are represented before you today are keenly aware of the need for a range of responses dependent on the needs and risks posed by an individual offender. As I have said, we acknowledge that there are situations where separation from society is necessary for the protection of society, but we also know that for the vast majority of persons sentenced to provincial terms, a lesser intervention will be effective and cost-sensitive. The form of that intervention is determined by a variety of factors, and it is not a good use of resources to require participation in programs which are not necessary, whether they be in the prisons or on the outside.
Parole, as is noted in our brief, while 83% successful in this province, is not overly utilized and is not within practical reach of the vast majority of provincial incarcerates. It is a useful mechanism, as we've stated, to determine the timing and conditions of release for some individuals, and that's proven by its success rate. It's worth highlighting the fact, which is also demonstrated in our brief, that while with parole there's a 16.4% revocation rate, primarily for technical violations rather than for substantive offences, there is by at least one study in this province an up to 39.8% rate of reincarceration within one year of offenders who completed sentences without benefit of conditional release.
For others, temporary absence has been a successful program. Temporary absence with residents in a community setting had developed into a very cost-effective and community safety-effective form of return to the community. The closure of the community resource centres last October, without consultation, effectively removed from the ministry its ability to respond to the need of those individuals at the higher end of the risk scale in a structured and supervised format. Ontario does not save money when it removes the ability of offenders to access the programs they require in order to successfully live crime-free. The fiscal expenses of repeated involvement with the criminal justice system, the human cost to victims of crime and the loss to Ontario of the productive participation in society of the offender has both immediate and long-term impacts on how Ontarians live and prosper.
For some, an extended form of temporary absence has been implemented, with some positive results in terms of decreasing pressures on our prisons, but for some of those individuals the extended form is being used without any support or interventions in the community, even when there has been an identifiable need for such support and supervision. It will not benefit the credibility of our criminal justice system if, by failing to afford resources to individuals who have modest needs for intervention, the result is an increased involvement with and conflict with the law. That route becomes expensive in the end.
Our brief notes other alternatives to incarceration which we believe merit your review, and we leave them with you. Each may be capable of successful inclusion in our responses to criminal activity. We urge you to view all of these forms of conditional release as part of Ontario's response to crime in order that the result will be a safer Ontario.
Ontario's experience has been that appropriate use of alternatives to incarceration is cost-effective and promotes community safety. However, as Mr Allgoewer noted, there is no system which guarantees 100% community safety. Tragedies happen; we can learn from them. We can improve our systems as circumstances change and as our investments in research lead us to develop improved interventions. But we will never be able to eradicate all crime. What we can and must do is take all steps within our knowledge and our experience to reduce the likelihood of criminal activity; a range of actions is available to us to do so. One of the most successful, cost-effective and human-development-effective methods that we have is our conditional release system; we urge you to ensure its continuance. We thank you for the opportunity of presenting to you today.
Ms Marg Stanowski: I'm Marg Stanowski. I'm the executive director of Springboard. I'm certainly very pleased to be here to speak with you. Springboard is an organization that's dedicated to making our communities safer places in which to live. We deal with thousands of offenders each year. Our programs also extend to individuals who are at risk for criminal involvement. We really hope to deal with preventing crime from occurring.
I should say in terms of my own experience that I've been involved in corrections for 23 years, 12 of those with the federal government. I was a federal parole officer and superintendent of a correctional centre. As well, I've been in the private sector the last 11 years.
In my observations today, I'd like to really reinforce some points made at the January 31 proceedings. We've heard about considerable strides and advances within the Ministry of Correctional Services, the Ministry of the Attorney General and the Ontario Board of Parole in the areas of risk assessment, integrating offender information systems and efforts to improve the effectiveness and efficiencies in parole decision-making, as well as improved documentation systems, enhanced performance measurements and member training. Many of the auditor's recommendations are being implemented. Accountability to the public must be a paramount consideration.
In appearing before this public accounts committee, our concern is a very basic one: Is the Ontario government wisely investing scarce criminal justice resources to prevent and reduce crime in our communities? I think that's a pretty basic and straightforward question. The auditor's report confirms that $400 million is being invested to incarcerate 50,000 provincial inmates each year. My math on that tells me that this costs about $80,000 per year per offender; provincially, I hear $50,000 to $51,000 per year. I'm wondering whether capital costs are included in that number, but I think it's something worthwhile to check. When you divide those numbers into one another, you seem to get a little higher amount than seems to be generally purported.
Again, I'd like you to consider that 80% of the 50,000 inmates in provincial institutions are non-violent offenders; about the same number are serving sentences of less than six months. The question comes back: Are we wisely investing costs -- of about $140 per day; that number seems to vary -- to incarcerate this offender population?
The auditor's report also confirms that in 1994 Ontario placed only 12% of provincial inmates in community programs. That was compared, I believe, with Quebec, which had a rate of about 38%, if my memory serves me correctly. The auditor recommended increased utilization of these cost-effective community placements for non-violent offenders. The dichotomy here that I'd like to raise to you with respect to that astute recommendation is that the recent initiatives and policies of this provincial government will actually decrease, not increase, Ontario's utilization of community placements.
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Let's take, for example, the closure of halfway houses. Institutions will have decreased reliance on valuable programs to place, in this case, non-violent inmates serving shorter sentences. We're looking at the introduction of electronic monitoring in this province. However, if one examines currently the criteria for participation in electronic monitoring, they're so very limited right now, as they exist today, that very few inmates can qualify -- very few. I also note that there's approximately about a 10% reduction in the parole-granting decisions that have been made in the last few months.
What does all this mean? I don't want to throw statistics at you. I'm dealing with some basic questions here. This means, to us, that Ontario is making a decision. We all, as taxpayers, are concerned about crime and victimization. We consider that the choice that is being made today by this government is to purchase and prolong unnecessary and costly incarceration as a primary safety strategy for the majority of provincial inmates who are serving sentences of less than six months for non-violent offences. It keeps going back to that question. This choice is being made when there is no evidence whatsoever to support that incarceration deters offenders or that such a costly measure can reduce recidivism.
I'd like to put forth three points here in terms of what we consider this choice will result in:
First, more non-violent offenders will be serving their sentences in jail; a simple conclusion.
Second, there will be diminished access to and support for investing in conditional release and community programs, even though research confirms that well-run community programs can reduce recidivism by as much as 50% on average and at one fifth the cost of incarceration; an important point.
Third, in terms of consequences of decisions that are being made today, we are not prioritizing our scarce resources to deal with the more violent offenders as well as for those high-risk offenders who will be denied parole and released at the completion of their sentence and returned to the community without supervision or controls.
We are urging this committee to consider expansion of a highly accountable conditional release program or gradual release board and to invest in well-run community-based programs. These recommendations will enhance, not diminish, community safety. They make economic sense and will enable this province to preserve costly resources for the violent and higher-risk offender. Choosing not to invest in this offender population will most assuredly endanger community safety.
Mr Peter Aharan: Good morning. I'm Peter Aharan, the executive director of the St Leonard's Society of London. I applaud your patience and your attention as we bring various points on these matters before you. I appreciate the opportunity to come and speak to you this day, and I will speak with specific reference. In order to further complicate your considerations, I would like to address some circumstances that I will, in general terms, speak to regarding the high-needs offender.
Prior to entering that particular point, I would like to inform this committee that in representing the St Leonard's Society of London, I represent an agency which was founded in 1969 and which, at the current time and through that evolution, has served a broad range of persons in conflict with our community in London, ranging currently from a 12-year-old person proceeding through the alternative measures initiative, a post-charge diversion effort, right through to an individual released from federal penitentiary serving a life term. So we have had the opportunity in our community to experience a broad range of persons in conflict with the law.
We do so with the support of a community-based board of directors, and that board is comprised of a spectrum of citizens in our community which includes senior ranking members of our local police force and -- I would also like to elaborate -- persons from business, persons from education, persons from the legal community.
My submission would like to focus on groups that I will call special-needs populations. My terminology will be, I think, common language. There may be more sophisticated and technical terms available to us; I would like to speak in general common terms. The subgroups which I wish to present for consideration to you today are not intended to be all-encompassing. In particular, there are subgroups within the correctional or criminal justice community, such as female, aboriginal or visible minority offenders, who have been identified as persons requiring special or particular consideration, and it is not my attempt to address those persons today.
With my brief comments I would like to focus on the relationship between parole and the specific needs or special needs posed by individuals who are identified as developmentally challenged -- in another era we may have referred to those people as mentally retarded -- or consumers of psychiatric services, commonly referred to perhaps as ex-psychiatric patients, who find themselves in the criminal justice system. I find that is of particular importance to considering the issue of parole. I think it is safe to assume that with our strategies towards deinstitutionalization of long-term care facilities for the developmentally challenged -- I cite Oxford Regional Centre in my neighbourhood, a 700-bed facility some 10 years ago, which will be emptying this year. I do not disagree with that strategy; I merely wish to illustrate that to suggest that of those 700 individuals who are developmentally challenged, a number of them, a percentage of them will find themselves in conflict with the law. What are the implications of that for our criminal justice community and in particular for the issue -- that is, parole -- before our committee today?
Also, I would like to make note of the psychiatric community. Also in my community, two psychiatric hospitals, St Thomas and London, are being collapsed into one. That tells me that 300 inpatients will be released to the community. That is a wise strategy for many good reasons. Again, I wish to make it clear, I am not addressing that strategy. I would like to address, however, I think a reasonable outcome of that strategy, and that is that some of these individuals will find themselves in conflict with the law. How will they be attended to in the criminal justice system?
As a basis for my comments to you today, I would like to share with you a little bit of information about a program that the St Leonard's Society of London was proud to operate from 1988 through to the closure of the residential centres in October 1995. That facility is Egerton Centre. It attempted to specialize in the reintegration of offenders who had a developmental history or an ex-psychiatric history. Mr Sandhu, who has appeared before you before, I would recommend as an individual to further consult about this particular program. It was well recognized, I believe, within the correctional community in Ontario. This facility did receive many referrals from the Ontario Board of Parole. It was a vehicle through which the board felt it could safely release individuals who were developmentally challenged or who had a psychiatric history, that they could be released safely into the community.
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The developmentally challenged offender or the ex-psychiatric offender is difficult to serve in a prison environment. Relationships with doctors, therapists, other necessary interventions are likely severed. A recent study completed by the ministries of Health, the Attorney General and Correctional Services indicates that upwards of 20% of Ontario prison inmates have a psychiatric history. I am speaking in simple terms here. That number does not include individuals who may be developmentally challenged. I wish to reiterate that the closing of institutions will in all likelihood add to that number, and that number is clearly disproportionate in terms of their representation in the broader community.
Our experience indicated that the developmentally challenged or ex-psychiatric person often came into conflict with the law as part of an overall deterioration of that person's community support system. Aging parents, exhausted caregivers or overtaxed community resources often preceded coming in conflict with the law. Once identified as having an antisocial behaviour or a conduct disorder, these persons found greater difficulty in accessing or maintaining their involvements in community supports.
Parole can offer these offenders access to appropriate services, re-establish and monitor vital community supports and reduce the potentially debilitating aspects of incarceration. The restoration of support systems, in concert with supervision, promotes public safety. Direct releases to the community without the benefit of supervision will result in increased demands placed upon various high-cost systems in our society. Two that come to mind quite quickly are emergency hospital rooms and the revolving-door problems that are associated with the justice system.
The needs and risks associated with serving developmentally challenged and ex-psychiatric offenders, coupled with the needs of the public, are best addressed through a correctional system that matches the offender with the appropriate institutional and community-based reintegrative strategies. Mechanisms of conditional release, including parole, have the potential to facilitate and monitor the offender's reintegration.
St Leonard's Society believes that the principle that I have described to you, a careful matching, attention to risk and need and matching to services, is an appropriate, efficient crime prevention strategy. This is particularly true, I wish to say in my submission, in the case of individuals who have developmental challenges or psychiatric histories.
I wish to merely point out that the range of complexity of managing the reintegration of offenders safely to our community encompasses many issues, one of which I believe is the issue of the special-needs populations in our prisons, and I see parole as part of a conditional release strategy as a very effective tool.
You have heard a great deal this morning about the halfway house situation and it is not my intent to go on about that particular point. I would like to indicate, though, that a particular facility that served this client group was directly related to the parole board as a referral mechanism. What that meant for the correctional system in our community was the provision of a continuum of care, and I feel that is fairly important and will be addressed by our final speaker.
An individual who is developmentally challenged or who is under psychiatric care was able, through temporary absence through to parole in a structured community-based setting, to maintain the important linkages with his or her care network. I feel that is a fairly important subgroup within the broader considerations of the administration of criminal justice and specifically the application of parole to persons in conflict with the law.
Thank you very much. I think we'll go to our final speaker, and I welcome your questions.
Mr Arthur Stratton: Good morning. My name is Arthur Stratton and I'm representing the Ontario Association of Community Correctional Residences, which is a province-wide organization representing adult halfway houses and phase 2 open-custody residences in Ontario.
Our association's mandate is to promote an informed, unified voice to enhance community services. Our members strongly believe that we provide opportunities for change in an atmosphere conducive to change. We firmly endorse the principle that community corrections be the main component of a continuum of care and remain directed by a caring community where volunteer support originated and exceptional leadership is available. Our association members adamantly support the use of a least-intrusive form of intervention and encourage ongoing research into both the criminogenic needs of offenders and effective treatment models.
It is clear from the experience of other jurisdictions that efforts towards rehabilitation of the offender are less effective within an institution than in the community and that crowding pressures cannot be eased through expansion of institutional accommodation. It is felt by the OACCR that there is potential for supervision and rehabilitation for many more offenders in community settings.
It has been asserted that providing supervision in community settings by a variety of means, ranging from halfway houses to intensive or day reporting under probation-parole supervision to electronic monitoring using various technologies etc, is more effective in providing rehabilitation and is more cost-effective than traditional jail settings.
By providing a high level of service and supervision to a high-risk, high-needs offender, one can predict a positive result. It is a mistake to assume that we are only able to affect low-risk or low-needs individuals. In fact, research has shown that providing a high level of service to a low-risk, low-needs offender will result in an increase in recidivism. As can be seen from current institutional overcrowding, the criminal justice system is not effective in targeting or sorting those individuals who do not require the level of service and supervision currently imposed.
We must have available a continuum of care throughout the system with a range of alternative community-based programs to which clients can be matched to maximize rehabilitative opportunity. We must target and match individual needs through the provision of a broad range of flexible services and supervision levels that are consistent with the client's needs and a cost-effective delivery using a case management model.
The Corrections and Conditional Release Act allows Ontario to have in place a release mechanism that will facilitate the rehabilitation of offenders and their reintegration into the community as law-abiding citizens. Nowhere in the act does it state that the province is limited as to how effective or successful the release mechanism can be.
With this in mind, we believe that the province must strive to ensure that the most effective release mechanism be in operation and that it include an enhanced use of community supervision based upon the assessed needs, risk and responsivity of the offender. Thank you very much.
Mr Toni Skarica (Wentworth North): I want to talk about the French system for a minute. I don't know if you have any stats there, but you have a lot of comparisons to United States jurisdictions and England. In France they spend about $500 a year incarcerating somebody. I don't believe their recidivism rates are much different than ours and I think actually may even be better.
There was an individual named Frank Abagnale who was doing worldwide frauds, and he spent time in both the French jails and US jails and now has been rehabilitated substantially, but he indicates that it was the French experience that had the most salutary effect on him in that they basically put someone in a cell -- I'm not advocating this, but this is what they do. They put somebody in a cell and they feed him and that's about it. It's a very cheap --
Interjection.
Mr Skarica: No, it's a very cheap way of incarcerating people and it's different than what we do. I'm not advocating it. But how does their recidivism rate compare to ours? Does anyone know?
Mr Aharan: I don't profess to know a great deal about the French system, but one comment. I am fairly safe in being able to say that their rate of incarceration is far, far lower than ours. Canada, and Ontario in particular, has a very, very high rate of incarceration, which suggests to me that the allocations of dollars and resources is consistent with that high rate of incarceration. We expend about 80% of our correctional resources on 20% of our client group.
My understanding in France is, that while they are not a soft-on-crime jurisdiction at all -- I don't think the French would ever be accused of that -- they have, comparatively speaking, a much lower rate of incarceration. Something around 50 per 100,000 against our 116 per 100,000 comes to mind.
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My thoughts, as you offer your information, tell me that perhaps they are targeting their resources and expenditures in their criminal justice system in a somewhat different way. I'm not sure if we want a gulag with one meal and bread. I don't know if that's really palatable in this country or not. I certainly hope not. But I do think there is a point to be gleaned from this, and that is their allocation of resources in terms of their incarceration strategy, because that is significantly different than here in Ontario.
Mr Skarica: In fact, I think we have the highest incarceration rate in the world.
Mr Aharan: Depending on how you measure it.
Mr Mike Colle (Oakwood): It's all those crowns trying to get their Brownie points.
Mr Skarica: I guess they're doing their jobs. As an alternative to that -- that's why I'm interested in the French model. What are they doing if they're not incarcerating people? What are they doing differently?
Mr Aharan: I do not know that specifically. I only know what they aren't doing. They are not incarcerating in the huge numbers that we are, so presumably they are doing things that are more community-based.
Mr R. Gary Stewart (Peterborough): Because we're involved these days with limited dollars and we must spent them very wisely and very efficiently, I'm concerned. Do we have a whole group of organizations that are doing similar things and we are diluting the dollars by supporting a lot of agencies that could be better spent in one or two or three and doing the job a little better? That's one question.
The other one is that I've listened to you this morning, and I appreciate we're talking about parole and what happens after, but it appears to me the big picture should be, "What are some of these groups doing prior to incarceration?" I think that's where we're losing it. We're doing everything after; we don't seem to do much before. I would suggest to all of the groups that have come in, why aren't one or two of you shifting your focus on to pre-incarceration rather than the other, and are there too many groups diluting the various programs you're trying to offer?
Ms Stanowski: Your first question is a good one. It's a question our own organizations are asking ourselves: How can we work better with existing resources? There aren't any new dollars. We're the first ones to acknowledge that. We're clearly examining those types of partnerships so that we're building on successes. We're examining that and streamlining most of our organizations. I certainly would compare most to having a very efficient administrative structure. I can speak personally for ours. We're at about 8% administration, which is pretty darn good when you start stacking that up, and that comes from partnership.
Your second question is probably one of the most astute I've heard today and through the January 31 proceedings. Your question suggests that if we do not deal with crime before it occurs, we're constantly going to be dealing with the aftermath, with victims, with harm done to this community. What groups are doing, and I certainly speak for myself and other colleagues in the field, is trying to reach those kids, who are quite easily identified at about six years old, who are likely to be the ones to be involved in trouble.
Hopefully, our work, coupled with that of the educational system, will augment our ability to intervene. Very importantly, you're also looking at efforts -- I can speak for one of our programs. We're going into schools speaking to 12- and 13-year-old kids, taking in another young offender who is stabilized, who has been through it, to talk to other kids, trying to get a message through that a life of crime, dropping out of school, drugs, is not where you should be.
That is a very important consideration. CITY-TV is doing a special right now on that very issue: What brings people to trouble to begin with? What sorts of things can we do to responsibly intervene in that situation?
You're seeing many examples of programs that are very effective. My concern, and I think my colleagues would agree, is that it is not a popular agenda right now. If you examine the health care system, prevention you don't see right away, do you? You may see it down the road in fewer smokers, more people living longer. How can we really examine the tangible results of investment in crime prevention?
It's the first on the agenda to go, because we are not perceived to be tough on crime, trying to get to that six-year-old kid perhaps 10 years ahead of a murder he or she may commit versus, "Lock them up and throw away the key." That strategy is simplistic, and it has to be supported by responsible investment in dollars to prevent crime from occurring and to prevent victimization.
Mr Colle: I want to thank all of you for your very precise and informative presentation. The written submission gives us some good examples, like the Connecticut example where they tried what Ontario's trying now, basically to incarcerate everybody, but they realized they were just throwing money away and now they've gone back to community intervention. Were any of your organizations consulted before the October closures, in the middle of the night, of the halfway houses?
Ms White: I can speak to that very directly. In late September, we received the first rumours -- we were slow to get the rumours -- that the halfway houses might be closed. We met efficiently as a group of concerned organizations. We prepared correspondence for the minister's attention. It was delivered to his office five days prior to the closure. We received a reply to that letter in January. Prior to that, in November, his deputy had arranged to meet with a few individuals.
Mr Colle: So there was no prior consultation. Has there been any consultation after the fact with ministry officials on the response to the closure and the effect it's having on people under your charge or in your organizations? Has there been any systematic consultative process after the fact?
Ms Stanowski: Not that I'm aware of. Some of this will perhaps come through research that may come to light some months from now. In terms of consultation, I think some groups have met with Mr Runciman, but there are very limited opportunities at this time for consultation. Some strategies are being undertaken, such as electronic monitoring, that at this point do not appear to be involving groups such as ours in consultation. It is said the province will be running this, government employees will be running this program, and at this stage we're not at the table in that form of consultation.
We hope that will change. Clearly, if you see a group such as ours here today, you will recognize that we're not a group that is soft on crime. We're a group that has hundreds of years of experience. I relate more to our organizational years than to our own personal.
Mr Stratton: I think the only opportunity coming about is an invitation to speak to the standing committee on the administration of justice regarding halfway houses and electronic monitoring. Five or six months after the closure of the houses, we're finally getting to say something.
Mr Colle: The thing that strikes me is the fact that even though they've talked about these electronic monitoring devices, it seems there have been no changes put in place for people to potentially access -- the criteria. There's no hint of changing the criteria.
Mr Aharan: I'd like to bring it into the focus of parole. One does not necessarily replace the other. I don't think that a bracelet for a developmentally challenged offender provides them with the kinds of supports necessary for them to make their way in our community and live a law-abiding life.
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Mr Colle: In other words, you can't just put a bracelet on a person who might have developmental problems. It's just not going to work. It's not a quick fix, you're saying.
Mr Aharan: That's one example. We would like to say that we see the application of modern technology as having potential, but we do not see it as a panacea, nor do we see it as a replacement for all other community-based services. It probably falls within a range of options that I believe a modern correctional service would want to employ. We would like to attach that to the primary question before you today, that is, the issue of conditional release or parole. There is that spectrum, and we encourage you to consider a broad application of that spectrum, as it is an efficient use of your resources, as it maintains your capacity to incarcerate the most serious offender. We share the concern, very definitely, about protection of our communities, but we see these things, including parole, as a range of options for the citizens of this province.
Mr Colle: The figure was that we spend $400 million a year on incarcerating people. That's 50,000 at $80,000 per person behind bars.
Ms Stanowski: This is the first time I've seen that number in the context presented in the auditor's report. The figures we have normally relied on have been approximately $140 a day to keep an inmate incarcerated, which is about $51,000 a year. That number may include some capital costs that may fluctuate. I can't address it. Still, regardless of whether it's $50,000 or $80,000, the low end, $140 a day to keep somebody in doing a very short sentence, is what we're here before you to save you. That money can be more wisely invested. To refer to the gentleman's point earlier -- I'm not sure who --
Mr Pouliot: Mr Stewart. He'll vote the other way.
Ms Stanowski: His point was, can those dollars be invested in prevention? How can we prevent more victims in our communities? I think those questions have to be asked.
Mr Colle: Basically, what you're telling us is not so much that we need new dollars; we need to invest our dollars more wisely and not just throw $80,000 at each person that some slap-happy crown puts behind bars because he's trying to get a promotion up the ladder.
Ms White: I would like to add a comment to what Mr Stewart had been saying about provincial support for the community-based organizations. I understood him to ask, was it a reasonable matter in times of fiscal restraint to provide funds to a diversity of community agencies who may be providing similar services? If I understood that correctly, I would point out that it was the decision of this government six months into the current fiscal year to discontinue all forms of grant programs to all community justice agencies in this province, so at that point there was no longer a financial relationship.
Ms Martel: Let me say to all the presenters that we appreciate your coming here today and taking the time out of your schedule. I was going to make a comment on your years of expertise, and it wasn't in chronological terms either. Let me ask four questions to all of you, and whoever wants to jump in and answer can do so.
First, I want to go back to the auditor's report of 1993 and quote to you what it said. The auditor stated, "We agree with the ministry that increased use of community programs would provide more flexibility for closing units in correctional centres." In the same document, the ministry itself said: "The ministry recognizes the importance of the role played by community programs in correctional services. We anticipate that the results of this review will provide the framework for determining future directions with respect to institutional and community programs."
All of you have made very clear to us the benefit, in terms of cost-effectiveness, of community programs. Why then do you think one of the first actions this government took was to close 25 halfway houses?
Ms Stanowski: That's a very good question, and we don't have a lot of time remaining to get into the details. Perhaps there was an assumption -- and maybe this is part of our responsibility, that we haven't done a good enough job in marketing what we do, what these community programs are really accomplishing. You have to look first to the community groups operating this program. Perhaps there was a misunderstanding. I think assumptions were made that these halfway houses were subsidized housing. We operate non-profit housing, and trust me, there's a major difference between a person going into subsidized housing and somebody going into a halfway house.
I think it was an understanding that should have been made on a better assessment of the facts, questions such as, were the offenders who most needed those halfway house beds getting access? Were we -- and again I'll include community groups with the government and institutional heads in this -- making decisions too cautious in accepting appropriate clients to those homes? I could make a case that would state that we should have those most in need living in those homes -- they're integrated into neighbourhoods -- and perhaps we were taking clients that did not most need that type of service.
I would say that there could have been some faulty assumptions that existed at the time.
Ms Martel: Part of the reason we think this was done was to save some money. It's interesting, because in the Common Sense Revolution the Tories made it very clear that funding for law enforcement and for justice would be guaranteed. I want to know if you are aware, with the closing of the halfway houses, whether any of those funds have been reinvested in other correctional programs?
Ms White: Not to our knowledge, although there's been quite a substantial capital investment in the electronic monitoring technology, which we believe has yet to see more than a handful of releases.
Ms Martel: In terms of mechanisms around conditional release, which you spent a lot of time on this morning, have you seen any expansion at all in any of those mechanisms which would save the province money instead of us spending the huge amounts we are right now on incarceration?
Ms Stanowski: No. Quite the contrary.
Mr Aharan: I think a worthwhile question at this juncture is to assess what the current population is in Ontario jails and correctional centres and look at that today and compare it. I think that would be a valuable exercise.
The question is not a simple one, however. When one looks at cost, in order for community-based initiatives to not be a cost add-on, there must be a complementary cost saving. The difficult nature of that issue spans all, shall we say, political stripes; that is, the operation of a correctional facility, particularly a small one, is exceedingly expensive on a per diem or per capita basis.
The investment strategy that many groups would report requires that the number of beds is reduced. You can't save money in a correctional administration, in a correctional framework, unless you reduce beds. The United States, for those us who work in the business, is the most graphic example of that. Once there is a prison bed, it will be filled. That's almost a tautology. Therefore, this requires the very difficult decision on the part of legislators and policymakers to close beds, to better target the allocation of that scarce resource for those individuals who most require it. That is the proponent, I think, that we put forward.
Ms Martel: One final question is with respect to consultation. I know Mr Colle asked you specifically about consultation around the halfway house issue. I want to broaden that a little. For any of you or the organizations you represent or the organizations which would be representative of community-based alternatives versus incarceration, has there been any chance to meet with the Solicitor General to put forward positions, solutions, recommendations you have to better use the resources we have in the criminal justice system (a) to ensure we continue to protect public safety but (b) that we also ensure that people don't repeat offend?
Ms Stanowski: Groups representing various organizations met with the deputy minister last November, with Elaine Todres. I believe a representative from the Salvation Army has met with Mr Runciman very recently. We have been afforded opportunities to appear before the strict discipline committee -- at which we were very well received, I might add, similar to how we're being received today -- and other opportunities certainly to present briefs. But at this stage, other than what Arthur Stratton referred to, an appearance before the standing committee on justice which I believe will be at the end of March, there haven't been formal opportunities for consultation. We hope that will change, because we think this is a business government that will listen to economic sense about safer communities and what makes economic sense in promoting safety. We will continue to request meetings and we think you will listen.
Mr Stratton: Also, in the past there was in place a process known as the minister's consultative committee, which included all the stakeholders within the correctional community, most of the volunteer organizations. That committee has not been in place for at least a year, and currently I believe it's being shown as not standing, with no standing members, and under review. That was always a very beneficial process because it had all the players involved being able to speak directly either to the deputy minister or the minister himself.
The Chair: Thank you very much for your time. On behalf of all the committee members, I want to thank you for sharing your years of insight with us on a topic that's obviously of very great interest to us.
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ELIZABETH FRY SOCIETY OF TORONTO
The Chair: The next presentation will be made on behalf of the Elizabeth Fry Society. Welcome.
Ms Claire Price: Good afternoon. My name is Claire Price. I'm president of the board of directors of the Elizabeth Fry Society of Toronto. We're a local agency. I understand that you have a presentation by the provincial council of Elizabeth Fry Societies on Monday. That's a separate body.
Our agency was founded in 1951. I'd like to go through some of the services the agency provides. We have a 14-bed halfway house and satellite apartment; we have an employment retraining program; we have group counselling in the areas of incest-surviving, shoplifting, drug and alcohol counselling; we have one-to-one counselling available with social workers; we provide a court worker program at the College Park courts in Toronto; and our social workers visit the Metro West Detention Centre, the Vanier institution and the prison for women in Kingston.
We understand the role of the Ontario Board of Parole to be protecting public safety and facilitating the rehabilitation of offenders, and we fully support this role. We encourage the committee to visit a correctional facility -- I'm not sure whether you've had the opportunity to do so -- and we would also encourage the provision of advance notice to inmates so that they may have an opportunity to give presentations to the committee. Obviously, they're the group most directly affected by the operation of the parole board and probably would have quite insightful comments as to the effectiveness of the parole board.
I noticed in the Hansard transcript from your proceedings in January that one of the suggestions made was to visit the Metro East Detention Centre. I would encourage you to visit facilities that house female offenders also. There are female and male offenders housed at the Metro West Detention Centre. However, when women are classified, they're generally classified to the Vanier institution, so I would encourage the committee to visit the Vanier institution as well as perhaps a male institution.
In the interests of saving time, I don't intend to repeat a lot of the statistics that have been cited by other groups with similar interests in this area. As you can see from the brief we've presented, our recommendations are essentially very practical. I should perhaps add that in addition to being president of the board of directors, which is a volunteer position, I am by profession a lawyer specializing in correctional law, so a lot of my dealings and the dealings women we serve as an agency have had in front of the parole board are reflected in our brief to the committee today.
Our first recommendation is that level 1 inmates -- and please don't hesitate to interrupt if there's any terminology that you'd like clarified. Level 1 inmates, as you may or may not be aware, are inmates who generally are incarcerated for offences of violence, and I believe driving offences that cause bodily harm and death have been added to that list recently.
Our recommendation is that these level 1 inmates should receive a thorough psychological or psychiatric assessment before appearing before the Ontario Board of Parole. Currently, the professional clinical assessment is mostly completed by social workers within the institution. While this might be useful in providing a history or summary of life events, we don't believe it provides a sufficient in-depth psychological risk assessment of the offender.
We also recommend that the quality of the reports be closely monitored. We agree with the committee's former report that there should be an established mechanism for exchange of information between the board and the ministry as to the quality of reports being received. Police recommendations as to parole can be addressed effectively through the pre-parole reports also.
The Elizabeth Fry Society of Toronto would find it very helpful for these reports to be shared with their residential social workers and the social workers who visit the institutions. We're frequently asked by the inmates to write a letter of support, and we find that because we don't have access to the information the board has, we frequently end up writing letters in somewhat of a vacuum. Provision of that information also would assist us in assessing the risk level of the individual we've been asked to support.
We noted in the committee's last report the concerns of correctional staff and police that should be addressed. We would like to put forward that these concerns, while very valid, should be only one of many factors to be considered by the board. Our concern is that the board not be viewed as being partial to any group and that it reflects indeed what it should be and what it hopefully is: an independent administrative tribunal.
If the concerns of correctional staff and police were to be shared a lot longer before the parole hearing, the Elizabeth Fry Society could perhaps provide some useful linkage in the sense that we could link up to programs in the community with the offender which would address the concerns of the correctional staff and police, or even sooner than release we could provide one-on-one counselling through social workers attending the institutions that could directly address those concerns. The sharing of information is an important point in us being able to provide efficient services also inside and outside.
One of our main recommendations is that all information relied upon in the hearing be shared with the inmate. I'm not sure whether the committee has seen the leaflet that's provided by the Ontario Board of Parole, Preparing Yourself for Parole. It's provided to inmates prior to their application, and in the leaflet there's the statement, "Written file information may be given to the offender before the hearing to help prepare themselves for the hearing." However, they're not told how to go about accessing that information and most unrepresented inmates have not had access to that information. They don't have the sophistication to know how to go about getting that information.
In the federal correctional system, the Corrections and Conditional Release Act mandates that all information that is going to be relied upon by the board must be shared with the offender at least 15 days prior to the hearing.
The sharing of information, we believe, is a very important part of the principle of administrative law and it's a fundamental part of the right to a fair hearing. We believe that offenders should automatically be provided with at least the basic information, which would include the pre-parole report, any clinical reports, the police reports, victim impact statements and any institutional reports.
Our concern around the Ontario Board of Parole having two members -- while we appreciate that it has saved substantial costs, the issue for us is what happens when the panel becomes deadlocked. We have a concern that any rehearing be given priority in scheduling and hopefully still be completed prior to the inmate's parole eligibility date.
With regard to the training of board members, we would agree with the committee's concerns in the last report regarding board members' interviewing skills, assessment of information and setting of parole conditions. We believe that board members should be provided with intensive initial training in areas that would include interviewing skills and basic psychology, which would improve the understanding of the clinical reports and would lead, we believe, to improved risk assessment at the hearing. And we believe they should receive criminal justice training as to how the system is supposed to work and how it works in reality, which are often two different things.
We believe sociological training would also be helpful, as well as gender-based training, which is currently provided to judges. Often, the reasons women come into conflict with the law may differ from those for men. For example, sometimes women would be in abusive situations, and it's frequently the case when you have women who are incarcerated for drug offences that there is some abusive relationship behind that, or that a large element of pressure or coercion has come from a partner or relationship situation.
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The setting of parole conditions should take account of any probation conditions which may have been set at sentencing. Our experience is that the conditions the board sets often are not as detailed or extensive as parole conditions may be, and obviously they should dovetail to be most effective.
In terms of the accountability of board members, an important point, and it's one that was brought up by Mr Stewart at the John Howard Society presentation, is that board members should not only be accountable for decisions when they have granted parole and there has been recidivism after that, but also we believe there should be accountability for denial of decisions where the inmate was so obviously ready at the time.
An important point is that a lot of times inmates come before the hearings when they have completed treatment programs, when they've set up things for themselves in the community that would reduce risk to the community and to themselves, and their motivation at the time they appear before the board is usually very high. After a denial, the inmate of course loses motivation, becomes cynical and may indeed provide an increased risk to the community upon release at the two-thirds stage.
An important point I'm not sure has been addressed by other groups is that the Ontario Board of Parole needs a separate, impartial, effective appeal body. Currently, the chair of the board may review decisions. In our view, this does not lead to the inmates viewing the process as being impartial, as the chair is too closely linked to the original panel. Also, the criteria for reviewing a case are not specified in the legislation, so the inmate doesn't know which factors will be considered to be relevant in such a review. There often seems to be confusion at the board level as to whether the chair is to only review the information that was before the original board or is to take into account new information that has been submitted since the original hearing.
We're also recommending smaller, more detailed practical matters, such as decisions being typed. We believe that if decisions are clearer, more substantial and legible, this would provide more guidance to parole applicants and may reduce the number of applications for reviews and appeals, which in itself might save some money.
In terms of measuring the effectiveness of the board's decisions, this is probably dealt with at quite an intense level before the committee, but we would encourage you to look at problems with supervision in the community which may also contribute to the level of effectiveness. Sometimes there can be extensive waiting lists for treatment programs in the communities; there can be a highly negative relationship with a parole office which may impact that particular individual.
Also, there's a large element of subjectivity involved. When you're looking at the effectiveness of a board, one parolee's success may not be defined objectively as a success, but for that particular individual it has led to a direct decrease in the risk of reoffending. For example, a parolee who has a condition not to drink, which may be a direct cause of the offending throughout the whole criminal record, may be able to abstain from alcohol but may be put back into the institution on a technical violation, perhaps not providing a change of address or a new employment name right off the bat.
With regard to offenders serving less than six months, we share the committee's concern that this category makes up 80% of the 50,000 inmates admitted to Ontario jails in 1994 yet only 3% receive parole hearings. We support the idea of a pilot project such as was mentioned in the report as the one in British Columbia, where any inmate serving over 90 days is automatically scheduled for a parole hearing.
The right to apply to the board for a parole hearing should be more widely advertised perhaps so that more short-term offenders could take advantage of this.
Also, there is an issue of linguistic difficulties. I'm not sure of the percentage of the inmates who speak different languages and who'd speak very little or no English, but clearly that's a group that needs to be addressed and often is included in the short-term offender group.
With regard to the temporary absence program, obviously the option of halfway house beds as a part of this program has been substantially reduced. The option is obviously more cost-effective than incarceration. The use of other temporary absence options, such as institution-based temporary absence and extended community temporary absence, in our experience has been very sparingly used. Perhaps this could be more effectively used. This might in turn reduce the need to look at addressing the needs of short-term offenders for parole.
The electronic monitoring program which has just come into operation in Ontario, and I believe it's only been in operation for a few weeks now, is only available to inmates in the last six months of their sentence, leading up to their two-thirds date. By that time, many offenders have lost their jobs. They've lost their families even. In the case of women, many are single mothers. To be able to hold on to their children is a huge thing in their lives, and they lose their families by being incarcerated and not being able to access these temporary absence programs and electronic monitoring programs.
There is no electronic monitoring program currently available to women. The information we have is that when and if it does become available, it's going to be done through a male institution. I'm not sure how that's going to work, but we have concerns about that also.
In summary, we'd just like to recognize the efforts at change by the Ontario Board of Parole but encourage them to adopt some of the recommendations for further improvement.
Mr Agostino: Thank you for the presentation. My first experience as a student was with the Elizabeth Fry Society. I was involved in one of my placements from college with what was called the fine option program at that time, a pilot project through the Elizabeth Fry Society in Hamilton. It would take young people, particularly those who had been put in jail for non-payment of fines or drinking in public, some relatively minor offenses, and under that system, once they got picked up, they were put in jail for a week, two weeks, 10 days or whatever the situation was. The program itself -- and I think it was very successful and it's continued today in different forms -- basically looked at the amount of the fine, calculated it into a wage range and said, "Okay, instead of spending 10 days in jail, if you owe $500, you have to do 100 or 125 hours of community work to offset that."
I think it benefitted tremendously. I know it's being used today and now it's used at the court level. It works well and I certainly want to commend the E. Fry for being in the leadership role at that time. I think the program should be much more widely used, and in different ways, across Ontario.
With regard to your comments on the parole board, I guess one of the questions or concerns I have is that -- and it's not just this government -- traditionally appointments to parole boards and to other boards have generally been made by the government of the day, often as partisan political appointments. Again, that does not only limit it to this government. I think that's been the way it's been done for a long time around here. So often the philosophy of the parole board can be stacked and can be driven very much by, if you have a government that decides the parole board should keep everybody in, you load the parole board with people who think they should do that, and if you have a government that believes that the board should be more flexible, you load the parole board with people who will show more flexibility.
In your view, would it help if there were a system where a determination was made by, rather than a parole board that is now appointed under the structure that we have, a format that's been experimented with in some areas where you have sort of a joint community board made up of representatives from a cross-section of community organizations and agencies that will understand the social, the police aspect of it, the agencies involved, all of those other factors that the community needs? Would that system, in your view, be more fair, give us a better assessment and really take away political stacking of boards that, either good or bad, may not often reflect the reality of the situation and be fair to the individuals who are seeking parole?
Ms Price: Yes, absolutely.
Mr Agostino: In Brant county there is a system there that has recommendations from a joint community board looked at before a parole board makes the final decision. On that board I guess the police are represented and a number of others. Ultimately, the parole board makes the final decision, but there's a system in that community where that board gets to make the recommendations, and it's based on the area of release as well. There's input there from that individual, from the community that the person is going to be released into. How much of a role do you believe the community and the agencies in communities where that person will receive parole or will go to a halfway house should have in that decision, which the parole board should consider?
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Ms Price: I believe there should be strong involvement of the community in that decision-making process. It sounds to me very similar to -- we have federal parolees, and as part of the process of acceptance into our halfway house for federal inmates, their cases are reviewed by a committee which is made up of a police representative, community representatives, as well as staff and agency representatives. I think that's probably the fairest from everybody's point of view. Everybody gets an input. Everybody feels that this is an acceptable risk, and that move is taken. So I would encourage strong community involvement in the decision-making process. I see it as far preferable to a partisan, political-appointment process.
Ms Martel: I wonder if you can give us a profile of some of the women in institutions whom your social workers are working with.
Ms Price: About 80% of the women that we serve have been either physically or sexually abused. A typical woman that we would serve would be between the ages of 21 to 31, often a single mother, low level of education, frequently in abusive relationships.
Ms Martel: Of that group, how many of them would be incarcerated for violent crime?
Ms Price: Very few.
Ms Martel: What happens then? What happens to the overall cost to the system when you have that level of incarceration with women who basically are not there because they've committed a violent crime, who because they're going to be incarcerated versus having some kind of temporary release program, are going to end up losing their kids as a result? What's the overall cost to the system of us dealing with people in that way?
Ms Price: I think you not only have to look at the cost of incarceration, I think you have to look at the cost of keeping those children in the children's aid society or in foster homes, intervention perhaps down the road with the children themselves coming into conflict with the law, which is often a cycle that's repeated. You'd have to factor in the cost of those children to the family unit as a whole, as well as job losses.
Ms Martel: Can you just give me a sense of what crimes these women have committed that would get them into this situation? Are we talking about shoplifting?
Ms Price: Yes. Generally, property-related offences: shoplifting, fraud, that sort of thing.
Ms Martel: Is your halfway house still open? I noticed on the front you talked about what you do, and that you also had a 14-bed halfway house residence.
Ms Price: It is open. We have federal beds and currently we still have provincial beds. I'm really not sure how long that's going to be the case. I would really hope that it continues, because women do not have access to the electronic monitoring program, so I would encourage the government to maintain our halfway house beds.
Mr Hastings: I'd like to compliment you on two areas, trying to get some of the agency social workers more involved in the overall risk assessment when they come up for parole, and secondly, your suggestion about an independent appeal system, although I don't necessarily accept the possibility that it would have to be a separate one.
I'm wondering if you could comment on how the quality of reports or the use of information would be helpful to parole board members if you're going to sanitize -- that's what I'd call it -- or leave out the negative aspects of a potential parolee's report? How are they going to know and combine that with ensuring public safety of these folks if you're going to remove most of the negatives, if not all of them?
Ms Price: I'm not advocating removing the negatives; I'm advocating removing the subjective negative comments. That's not a comment, for example, that would come from the police saying that this offender is a danger to the public. What I'm referring to in that comment is a comment made by the parole officer or the author of the report that would comment on other people's comments, which I frequently, as a lawyer, see in reports.
Mr Hastings: So it's sort of a negative editorial comment about the individual's behaviour.
Ms Price: Yes. It doesn't come across as being independent and fairly evaluated.
Mr Hastings: I think you have a good suggestion in terms of the sharing of the information. My concern is, how would this type of information be structured so that it's shared effectively yet not open up liability to those who are making the decisions? There are privacy issues involved here in terms of how a potential parolee's progress is coming along, I would suspect, if it's in an institution like Vanier.
Ms Price: In the federal system, all that information is shared with the offender and there don't seem to be any privacy concerns there.
Mr Hastings: No privacy concerns at all? Then how do they get around -- there must be a way that they have the reporting system in place so that there is no possibility of liability for these people under charter cases. They must be able to get the info to people without these other complicating issues arising.
Ms Price: Are you referring to privacy issues around victim impact statements in particular?
Mr Hastings: Privacy issues I would think around the individual's risk assessment, potential for being able to perform in the community, that kind of thing. What I'm trying to get at is, I'd like to see this occur if it can be done federally. I'm just wondering how they're doing it on their disclosure forms so that it removes completely any potential liability against the people who are making these decisions, because in some instances where you have reoffending people, there has been -- rarely, I would admit -- probably a charter case, because there are always folks around wanting to exercise the rights of the prisoner, whatever gender, in the system. You see that occasionally.
Ms Price: I'm not quite sure what you're referring to. Do you mean inmates challenging parole board decisions to keep them in?
Mr Hastings: Yes, because perhaps one of the factors that was used could have prevented that individual from getting either first-time release or second.
Ms Price: In the federal system, the information is shared through CSC, Correctional Service Canada, reports. They operate, as you may be aware, on a case management model, where the case manager and the case management team would summarize the institutional progress through progress summaries. Also, psychological reports would be shared.
But people are still accountable for what they say, and I believe it's our view that individuals still should be accountable because the inmate should have an opportunity to address any concerns fairly. If the concerns are on the table, then it can be dealt with in a more direct and honest fashion. The charter challenges that I'm aware of would be available in any event and probably would not particularly be addressed to an individual but more addressed to the institution or the body making the decision.
Mr Hastings: Mr Chair, can we ensure that we get any reports or forms the federal Correctional Service Canada is using in this regard that are made available to the parole board?
The Chair: Yes, by all means.
Mr Agostino: Can we get a copy of the form that they use in regard to the community structure that was referred to earlier? If we can have that as well, the community-based review board that is set up to make recommendations and what the structure of that is like?
The Chair: Fine. We'll do that.
Ms Price: That's mandated in CSC contracts.
The Chair: Thank you for your presentation.
ONTARIO ASSOCIATION OF CHIEFS OF POLICE
The Chair: The final presentation this morning will be made on behalf of the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police. Welcome. Thank you for your patience.
Mr Jack Delcourt: Good afternoon. I'm Jack Delcourt and I represent the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police. As chair of the legislation committee of the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police, I thank you for the opportunity to appear before you to comment on the 1995 Annual Report of the Provincial Auditor. The activities of community services and the Ontario Board of Parole are of definite interest to us. We were asked to comment on two particular sections, which are 3.17 and 3.18 of that report, and I will limit my comments to those two sections.
Membership in our association includes the chiefs of police of all municipal police agencies in Ontario. In addition, the commissioner of the Ontario Provincial Police belongs to the OACP, and membership is open to senior officers of all police services. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police is also represented, and we're pleased to have many prominent individuals from the private sector as associate members.
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We strive to respond proactively and professionally to issues impacting on the quality of policing in Ontario. Our goal is to provide a safe environment for our citizens so that the climate may be conducive to an improvement in the quality of life.
This panel had the opportunity to hear presentations from the Ministry of the Solicitor General and Correctional Services and the Police Association of Ontario. Having been provided with a transcript of their comments, I will not repeat what you've already heard. Therefore, you'll be pleased to hear that my presentation will be a short one and you may have some time for lunch.
At the onset, I wish to state that we, as an association, support the position taken by the Police Association of Ontario. We're concerned that changes to the justice system, even the more simple ones, do not take place as they should. To be more specific, we find it very difficult to get the agreement of the stakeholders to streamline the system. Consequently, our police services must sacrifice front-line resources to handle matters which have been downloaded to us.
I suppose that, as a body, policy officers in this province have been less than vocal in accepting the extra work, but this is about to change. We regret that we can no longer accept additional duties when alternatives are available. We will demand that other partners in the system handle what is rightly their responsibility. It is likely that some may view our new approach as militancy. I hope this committee understands that this stance is due to the critical lack of funding for our work. We are certainly not looking for confrontation, but we will be firm in demanding that all partners demonstrate a willingness to come to grips with the issues of the day.
Our association wishes to discuss a few specific recommendations and comments found in the auditor's report. Initially, we will deal with community services activities.
First, we were somewhat surprised to discover that the rate of non-compliance with probation orders is significantly high. Further, the auditor commented that the final date for laying a charge was often overlooked. As an association, we view the granting of probation as a chance given an offender to prove that he or she is ready to assume a responsibility. If that person fails to comply with any of the conditions in the probation order, without justification, a charge should automatically be laid, unless the non-compliance was found to be beyond the offender's control.
We find the ministry's response to be less than adequate in this instance. Creating more paperwork is no solution to the problem of non-compliance. We do not find any resolve on the part of the ministry to prosecute those who openly flaunt the system. Our experience cleary demonstrates that abuses will continue to occur until proper action and decisive action is taken. We recommend that the ministry adopt a policy of laying a charge against every offender who fails to comply with the conditions of parole.
Second, the auditor mentions that as a policy, non-compliance is deemed to have occurred only after offenders have missed at least three appointments without contacting their probation-parole officers. Again, we must state that we are concerned with this lenient approach. We cannot understand why offenders are given so much latitude to ignore their commitments. We are distressed that the ministry's response fails to address the problem with any degree of specificity.
We find no evidence of any resolve to curb the incidents of non-compliance. The terms "timely response" and "review of its policies and procedures" mean little in terms of positive action. If the ministry is serious about non-compliance, then specific instructions as to what constitutes non-compliance and the laying of charges should be provided to probation-parole officers.
Third, we disagree with the ministry's statement that "sentencing practices routinely place an emphasis upon the offender compensating the victim." Our experience in a number of courts in Ontario shows that judges are reluctant to issue orders for the compensation of victims. We believe that a large percentage of offenders who do not comply with restitution orders have the means to do so, but simply ignore their commitment. It is, therefore, imperative that such offenders be dealt with swiftly by probation-parole officers.
The ministry's response appears to downplay the auditor's recommendation by concentrating on the offender's inability to pay. We believe that position to be contrary to the intent of the order. If a judge, after considering all aspects of a case, orders that restitution be made, it becomes imperative for persons employed for the purpose of ensuring compliance with the order to take action when there is obvious and wilful disregard of the order.
Finally, we are very concerned that, in one area surveyed by the auditor, the lack of proper documentation leads us to believe that almost half of the offenders may not have complied with the treatment conditions. In our view, the lack of treatment becomes a serious safety issue for the community. In fact, many orders requiring treatment are issued instead of incarceration. We fully agree with the auditor that offenders who, after counselling, wilfully fail to comply with a treatment order should be brought before the court for a more appropriate sentence. The response of the ministry is somewhat cryptic in that it refers to a memorandum issued in June 1995. A somewhat cynical comment would be that memoranda do not solve problems unless they contain specific directions to the officers. We are not aware of the substance of the correspondence.
Our comments pertaining to the auditor's review of the Ontario Board of Parole are of a general nature. We believe that police and other agencies provide more pertinent and timely information to the board members than in the past. Consequently, we expect that the determination of an offender's threat to the community will become an easier task. We have a vested interest in this issue because our workload is affected by decisions of the board.
We are pleased to read that "recommendations of police and corrections staff concerning an offender's suitability for parole are highly regarded by the board." We commend the board for recognizing the importance of discussing probation and parole recommendations with stakeholders at the first reasonable opportunity.
The effectiveness of the Ontario Board of Parole can be measured. It is our recommendation that initiatives undertaken by the board be the subject of a review at the end of 1996. In particular, our association is interested in the results of the two-part research strategy which should have been developed by now and should produce pertinent data by the end of this year.
Please be assured that our association is prepared to work with any ministry to help streamline the justice system. We hope our comments will be of some use to you in your deliberations.
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Mr Pouliot: Thank you very kindly. I echo the sentiment that from time to time schedules for some, in this case for all of us, have been disrupted. We certainly appreciate your patience and presentation.
Candidly, I couldn't help but reflect, as I was listening to your brief presentation, on the consistency that the people you represent have exemplified over the years, that of a tough line on crime. There's no pretext here: the commitment to protect society and enhance all our lives.
I wish to draw your attention to page 6, the second paragraph, and I quote: "Finally, we are very concerned that, in one area surveyed by the auditor, the lack of proper documentation led us to believe that almost half of the offenders may not have complied with the treatment conditions." Going past the cloak and dagger, notwithstanding the intrigue, that very wording brings a natural question: What led you to believe that half of the offenders may not have complied with the treatment conditions? Was it the tone of the auditor? What did the auditor say?
Mr Delcourt: I believe the auditor referred to it. It's at page 254. It seems to me that the auditor was commenting on the lack of adequate documentation, and as a result of that documentation, it was the auditor's impression that almost half of the offenders may not have complied with treatment conditions, and that worried us considerably, as you may well understand, because we're concerned for the impact on the community.
Mr Pouliot: I see. Thank you. If I further put this into context, the mandate is value for money. Are Ontarians, the taxpayers, getting a fair bang for their hard-earned dollars, that he does not handle? Someone in there is either negligent, by way of lack of resources, not by intent, never, but they don't know what they're doing, to such an extent that almost half the people -- we speculate, but it's sort of an educated guess. We have reason to speculate that it could be half. Even if it's a ballpark figure, it's a fairly accurate one, the lack of compliance, and you're saying give the benefit of the doubt.
You know that the auditor's role is not one that will dwell on the nuts and bolts too much, but it paints a vague picture of whether a program works well or not. It throws the ball back to the ministry and as a watchdog it says, "Well, I see a malaise here; my role is not to tell you how to fix the malaise but I await your response," which should start focusing on the generalities evoked by the Provincial Auditor.
Notwithstanding administration, and it's my final question, if you were to come up with some recommendations -- you comment but you don't come up with what you would see as the alternative. You're the expert in the field. I'm only a politician here. I try the best I can to serve the people who have had the generosity to elect me to represent them, so I have to ask people like you, because I really don't know. I can help, in terms of legislating, but I can't do any more than that. One, two or three ideas to address the concerns of the provincial auditor: What would you do if you were sitting right here?
Mr Delcourt: I can answer that in two ways. I can answer that as a representative of the association, which I'd rather not do; I'd rather answer it as a chief of police, as an individual, and I say, listen to the people who came before me. They had some good ideas. They had some good ideas about halfway houses. I was on the board of directors of a halfway house that got closed down and I deplored that. I think you get better value for your dollar by having halfway houses than having people in custody. That's my view, and that's the view of several of our police officers in my community.
Mr Skarica: Dealing with breaches of probation, a common form of sentencing, and there are probably thousands of them per year, is the suspended sentence and probation. Are you familiar with that type of sentence? And perhaps you can tell me, where are you chief of police?
Mr Delcourt: I'm in Barrie right now.
Mr Skarica: All right. My experience is in Hamilton and we have hundreds of those types of cases and what happens if somebody breaches and they do get charged is they get charged with breach of probation, they get a $100 fine and that's the end of it. They never get brought back for resentencing on the original sentence. The suspended sentence means you can get brought back and resentenced and that never, in my experience in 12 years in the courts, happened once and I don't know if it happens anywhere else in Ontario.
It seems to me that the auditor's recommendation should go further, that in addition to charging breach of probation, if the person does get a real break and gets a suspended sentence, they should go back to the original sentencing judge and be resentenced. My question is twofold: Does that happen in your experience in your end of the world, and should it happen more often?
Mr Delcourt: Well, it doesn't happen in Barrie. I'd like you to understand what I'm trying to say here, what we're trying to say as an association. We're trying to say that if you will enforce the laws that exist, ie, breach of probation, breach of parole, and lay charges, in the short term you'll have a lot of charges. In the long term, you'll see a major decrease in breaches.
I know how it varies from one community to the other. I was chief of police in a smaller northern Ontario town prior to coming to Barrie, and we didn't have to lay too many breach of probation charges because they were dealt with automatically. There was an automatic process. In addition, the local judges took a pretty dim view of it and dealt with the breach accordingly. That took care of the problem.
It's no solution to let these things go as we do, because it gets worse and you end up with probation and parole officers having to give people three or four chances, failing to keep their appointments and what have you, probably because they're too busy -- I assume that they are -- and they can't lay the charges. So we're losing it because we're not dealing with the situation.
Mr Hastings: Chief, I'm wondering what you're referring to on page 4 when you talk about police officers are no longer going to "accept additional duties when alternatives are available. We will demand that our partners in the system handle what is rightly their responsibility," da, da, da, da, da, and we end up with the constant refrain we're hearing, which is pretty unimaginative, "critical lack of funding for our work."
What specifically are you suggesting the alternatives should be for the other so-called partners in the system that they're not carrying out right now that they should be? Could you spell that out very clearly, because I take it to be -- there's a little bit of a whiny tone here. There's a tentativeness to your whole approach to this thing.
Mr Delcourt: No, it's just that --
Mr Hastings: What are the alternatives then?
Mr Delcourt: We have to go back I suppose several years, to the review of the Police Act and the new Police Services Act to be put in place, additional duties placed on the police, ie, court security. That appears to be interpreted by some judges in the system as utilizing the police to do what the sheriffs used to do. And it goes from more than just providing security. I don't know if you've ever been in court. I don't know what your profession is. But in those days you will recall you had several members of the sheriff's office who would look after a courtroom. Now it's expected in some courts that police do this. Well, we can't do this any more. We just can't. We don't have the resources to do it.
This is the type of thing we're doing. That's just an example. In some other jurisdictions, police officers are expected to take documents from the courtroom to the provincial court or the general court office. These are things that cannot be done any more. We just can't, and we have to get away from that. This is what I'm referring to, this type of thing. That has to be done by people other than police officers, other than people employed by police services.
Mr Hastings: Could you spell out in a follow-up presentation or suggestions what specific things, aside from that one you're referring to, what other specific things are you not prepared to do any more, and how would you spell out who those people are, the partners you're talking about, who ought to be doing this?
Mr Delcourt: Yes. It can be done.
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Mr Hastings: I appreciate that.
Mr Colle: I want to thank the chief for coming here representing, really, the people in the front lines dealing with crime, and I don't at all find your report to have a whining tone to it whatsoever. I think this is a realistic tone as we see the continued downloading of the failures of the bureaucracy on to the front-line people. I think this is what this committee is trying to deal with is how to basically get more efficiencies out of the system and I'm glad that you've brought these points forward. Again, I think it's a very positive approach you've taken.
By the way, was the association of chiefs of police consulted before the halfway houses were shut down?
Mr Delcourt: No, sir.
Mr Colle: No consultation?
Mr Delcourt: None.
Mr Colle: This is incredible. Anyway, in terms of your experience, we're looking at the efficiencies of the system, and I know we've heard from the advocates to a certain extent about how the community-based halfway houses or that might be more cost-effective and might work from the inmates' perspective. As a professional police officer, how can these halfway houses really become more accountable or a way or increasing also efficiency whereby government can get a bigger bang for its buck in terms of dealing with criminality? How do halfway houses do that in your experience, from a police perspective and a person who, as you said, was involved with a halfway house in your own community?
Mr Delcourt: In our experience, there was a very low degree of recidivism involving people who went through that particular process, at least the halfway houses I'm familiar with. I can't speak for all of Ontario, but I'm familiar with quite a few of them. It appeared to be a very efficient way of doing it if people don't become involved with the law again and would have saved a lot of money all around.
Also, there's a question of the cost per day of keeping an inmate. It's cheaper in a halfway house than it is in jail. At least those are the figures that were provided to me. And I don't claim to be an expert in that regard. I'm prepared to stand corrected on that, but our administrator and other administrators of halfway houses claimed that it was cheaper, and that was supported by our local jail, to have somebody in the halfway house as opposed to having him in custody.
Mr Colle: The other question I have is in terms of the expenditure of dollars, as you know, there's $80,000, we've been told, per incarceration spent by this government. Don't you think this money might be better spent in whatever it is, in more effective policing to prevent the crime? Because if you see police officers out there in the community, whether it's community-based policing or other ways, you won't have to spend that $80,000 per person you're going to put in jail.
Mr Delcourt: If you're asking me if my budget could be increased, yes, I agree with you, it could be, for proactive programs in particular. And it was mentioned, I believe, by another speaker this morning that when the dollars get a little tight, the first thing to go is your proactive initiatives. That's very unfortunate, but that's the way it is. I agree with you. It would be nice to have that money to be used for proactive programs.
Mr Colle: Because it seems what is happening with the police officers is that you're basically downstream pulling people out of the stream as they drown. Meanwhile, you don't have the resources to prevent the drowning because upstream the bridge has collapsed.
Mr Delcourt: Yes.
Mr Colle: It's always after the fact that the police officers have to clean up the mess.
Mr Delcourt: It's a very complex problem. I'm not going to solve anything here by my short presentation. I think you have to take all the presentations -- and I'm glad that I was here and I had to wait, because I had a chance to listen to other presentations I found quite interesting, actually. If we get all the stakeholders together, I'm sure we'll find some solutions that are really worthwhile.
Mr Colle: So the critical message you're giving this committee is that it's important to get the front-line people together in a meaningful two-way dialogue and consultative process before we can improve the system.
Mr Delcourt: That's correct.
Mr Colle: And up until now it's been hit-or-miss or basically not there in terms of getting your advice or the advice of other stakeholders, and that's what's got to be done before we can get anywhere.
Mr Delcourt: That's correct. Now, my presentation was very focused. It was focused on two specific sections of that report. I did not get the entire report to review, so I'm not aware of what the other sections dealt with. Consequently, I dealt with what I had to, and this is why it appears to be perhaps harsh in terms of dealing with people who breach the rules. Of course, you have to understand where we come from as police officers. We're the ones dealing with the problem to start with.
Mr Colle: Picking up.
Mr Delcourt: Yes.
Mr Colle: Thank you very much, chief, for coming down here from Barrie. I'm just wondering whether it's appropriate to move that there be a directive given to the Solicitor General's ministry, even the deputy minister or the Solicitor General himself, to sit down and talk and create some kind of constructive mechanism for dialogue between these front-line people and his office before they continue making changes to the system. I think, as members of this committee, it's going to be the auditor who's going to be stuck with picking up the pieces too in terms of the cost. So before the changes are made to the system, I think it's essential that people like the chief here be given an opportunity, on behalf of the association of police chiefs, to sit down with the Solicitor General or the deputy ministers or the upper-level bureaucrats to hear from people who are doing the grass-roots work here. I don't think we can really deal with the problem adequately here unless that's done first of all in terms of getting at the solutions, the physical solutions here. That's what I think really has to be directed, and I'd like to propose that be given as a suggestion by this committee to the minister.
The Chair: I assume you're making a motion.
Mr Colle: Yes.
The Chair: I find that to be in order, and furthermore it's certainly within the power of this committee to make a recommendation of that nature. I'd like to hear from committee members on that, obviously. I noticed that the chief wanted to comment on this. Go ahead.
Mr Delcourt: The committee may be getting the wrong impression here. There is dialogue with the minister, between the minister and the association. There is dialogue on a number of issues. Now, we're talking about one specific issue here. We're talking about the closing of the halfway houses. There was no dialogue for the closing of the halfway houses, but we have met with the minister and we meet with the minister on a fairly regular basis to discuss our problems. So it's an open relationship. I don't want the committee to think that it's otherwise. I want to make that clear before you put a motion on the floor.
Mr Colle: What I was getting at is just this whole issue of effectiveness in this parole system as it is linked to things like halfway houses, and now we're getting into the bracelets. If that area hasn't been addressed yet, that's what I would like you to -- because that's what we're dealing with here, basically, is that specific area. Before we go too far down the road, that's why I thought it might be good to deal with that issue. So I'm not asking for the whole spectrum of issues. I'm sure there's consultation there.
Mr Delcourt: I just wanted you to be aware that we do meet with the minister on a whole variety of issues.
The Chair: Any debate on Mr Colle's motion?
Mr Pouliot: On Mr Colle's motion, Mr Chair, precisely, exactly what Mr Colle is emphasizing: In view of the series of presenters this morning, who were, I took it, unanimous in asking that they be consulted before any further action, or I would say erosion, be taken on the much-necessitated and proven benefits of the halfway house -- so only, with respect, chief, in that context, and you, with your inclusivity and that of presenters, and I think it fits into the intent and spirit of Mr Colle's motion -- we're saying that yes, in terms of parole, yes, in terms of halfway houses, that people be granted more than the pleasure of an audience, that that be an ongoing dialogue with the minister responsible.
Mr Skarica: I just wanted to say that it seems to me redundant, as the minister's meeting in any event, according to the testimony we've just heard.
Mr Colle: Not on this issue.
Mr Skarica: Which issue is this?
Mr Colle: Parole and the effectiveness of it and the halfway house closure and the effect it has on cost efficiencies in the system.
Mr Skarica: All right, on that issue, but basically you indicate there's an open relationship with the minister?
Mr Delcourt: Yes, there is.
Mr Agostino: We're just reinforcing it. We want more consultation.
The Chair: All right, then, if there's no further debate, those in favour of the motion? Those opposed? The motion fails.
Interjections.
The Chair: Chief, thank you very much for your time and your patience.
Ms Martel: I have three requests for information from research, please, with respect to what we heard this morning. Firstly, I'd like to have some information regarding whether or not the $80,000 figure that we've heard this morning per inmate is a figure which also includes capital costs around incarceration. Secondly, I would like to get some information regarding the level of incarceration rates versus the level of conditional release mechanisms that are currently being used since this government came to power. Thirdly, I want to know if and where the savings from the closure of the halfway houses have been reinvested back into the correctional programs in this province.
The Chair: If there's no further business, then we stand adjourned until 9:30 tomorrow morning.
The committee adjourned at 1301.