Evidence of meeting #27 for Public Safety and National Security in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was technology.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:45 p.m.
NDP
Jasbir Sandhu NDP Surrey North, BC
I want to back up and to use your expertise, since you're here.
Who would this bracelet be good for? Would you use it for low-risk offenders, or medium-risk offenders, or high-risk offenders? Who would this work for?
4:45 p.m.
Director General, Research Branch, Correctional Service of Canada
The vast majority of studies that have been done actually have used relatively low-risk offenders, a group of offenders we don't even have in our system, or we have very few of them. A lot of the uses have been with driving-while-impaired offenders—DWI, or drunk drivers. A lot have been used with very minor property offenders. We think if it were going to be used effectively, it would be used, actually, with higher-risk offenders.
4:45 p.m.
Director General, Research Branch, Correctional Service of Canada
Well, that's where you have the potential of achieving the greatest gain. If you spend your resources working with low-risk offenders, you spend a lot of money, but you don't have the opportunity for very much gain. In some research we see about 6% of low-risk offenders maybe committing a new offence after two years. For high-risk offenders, you find that number is more like 25%. We can deal with the 6% of people who will commit a new offence or we can deal with the 25% of high-risk offenders who will commit a new offence. Which ones do we want to deal with in order to impact public safety? It's those high-risk offenders.
4:45 p.m.
NDP
Jasbir Sandhu NDP Surrey North, BC
In other words, it would be cost-effective to use the electronic devices or electronic monitoring just for high-risk rather than low-risk people, because if they're low-risk offenders, you presume they are not going to violate their conditions of release or whatever else they have.
4:45 p.m.
Director General, Research Branch, Correctional Service of Canada
There hasn't been a lot of good work—in fact, there hasn't been any good work—to look at a cost-benefit analysis of electronic monitoring. If you have a limited number of resources and you have to decide who to spend them on, you want to spend them on the high-risk offenders, because that's where you can get the greatest gain for public safety.
4:45 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kevin Sorenson
Thank you very much.
We'll now move back to the government side and to Mr. Rathgeber, please.
4:45 p.m.
Conservative
Brent Rathgeber Conservative Edmonton—St. Albert, AB
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Dr. Grant, for your attendance here today and for your testimony.
I'm quite intrigued by the statement on page 3 of your opening comments, in which you indicate—and I agree with you—that EM is not intended to be a mechanism for reducing recidivism.
You also indicated, I think in response to one of the questions from Ms. Hoeppner, that the research is clear that EM is not successful in reducing recidivism. Those are slightly different concepts. One is the intent of doing something, and the other is the conclusion.
I take it that both of those statements are true. The intent is not to reduce recidivism, and in fact it does not reduce recidivism.
4:45 p.m.
Director General, Research Branch, Correctional Service of Canada
That's right. Certainly some people would argue—I am sure the previous presenter would argue—that it could have that effect, but that's not what the literature says. When we use if, we are really focused on—
4:45 p.m.
Director General, Research Branch, Correctional Service of Canada
—location. Do we know where the person is, and that sort of thing?
4:50 p.m.
Conservative
Brent Rathgeber Conservative Edmonton—St. Albert, AB
If it's ineffective in reducing recidivism, that must be vis-à-vis some other benchmark. Are you telling me that statistically it's less effective than incarceration in terms of recidivism?
4:50 p.m.
Director General, Research Branch, Correctional Service of Canada
In fact--
4:50 p.m.
Conservative
Brent Rathgeber Conservative Edmonton—St. Albert, AB
What are you measuring it against when you say that it is not effective in reducing recidivism?
4:50 p.m.
Director General, Research Branch, Correctional Service of Canada
If you take a group of people and you give one group electronic monitoring and you just leave another group either in prison or even in the community—so now you have three groups, one with electronic monitoring, one still in prison, one still in the community—you will not see a lower recidivism rate for those who are getting electronic monitoring compared to the rate for the other two groups.
4:50 p.m.
Conservative
Brent Rathgeber Conservative Edmonton—St. Albert, AB
Right, and then the only time that electronic monitoring is used is obviously if somebody's on some sort of conditional release. You don't use electronic monitoring for people who are incarcerated.
4:50 p.m.
Director General, Research Branch, Correctional Service of Canada
No, and you also wouldn't be able to monitor...they wouldn't have any offences while they were in custody.
4:50 p.m.
Director General, Research Branch, Correctional Service of Canada
If you look at them after they're released, you'd see that the extra six months in prison didn't reduce the likelihood that they would reoffend and that the six months on electronic monitoring also didn't reduce the likelihood that they would reoffend.
4:50 p.m.
Conservative
Brent Rathgeber Conservative Edmonton—St. Albert, AB
Right, so the only conclusion I can come to, from what you're telling me, is that conditional release is not effective in reducing recidivism vis-à-vis incarceration.
4:50 p.m.
Director General, Research Branch, Correctional Service of Canada
No, conditional release that we use within the Correctional Service of Canada, which includes participation in programming and other activities while they're in the community, including work activities and things like that, is an effective means of reducing new offending. The function of conditional release is to provide a gradual process of moving the offenders from the institution out into the community so that we can impact the likelihood that they will remain crime free.
Studies have shown that using conditional release, such as parole, and statutory release, which is a gradual release, reduces the likelihood that new offending will occur. What we were comparing were the two different systems. It doesn't have any better effect than anything else.
4:50 p.m.
Conservative
Brent Rathgeber Conservative Edmonton—St. Albert, AB
Are you saying you can statistically differentiate the effect of conditional release from the effect of monitoring the offender? Can you somehow measure the effectiveness of their counselling programs or their reintegration into society separately from the monitoring?
Perhaps I'm oversimplifying. Say you take two populations. One is subject to conditional release and electronic monitoring, and the other is not subject to electronic monitoring and is incarcerated. If you have a higher degree of recidivism in that population, it would appear to me that the conditional release system is not as effective in reducing recidivism as incarceration. I'm oversimplifying matters, because in my scenario, I've completely discounted counselling and other aspects of conditional release.
My question is whether you can statistically measure the effect of those other aspects.
4:50 p.m.
Director General, Research Branch, Correctional Service of Canada
It's very difficult to separate the specific impact of conditional release by itself, because we don't have conditional release just by itself. We have many other things going on. When you're on conditional release, you have a parole officer. That parole officer is meeting with you and discussing what your issues are and how you can work through challenges you're facing.
Conditional release, then, is a whole combination of different things. It's not just the fact that they're in the community; they're in the community and are getting support from their parole officers.
4:50 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kevin Sorenson
Thank you very much, Dr. Grant.
We'll now move to Mr. Scarpaleggia.