There's a number of ideas there. I appreciate and thank you for your comments and for describing it as an open-ended question.
The safety and security of our families are uppermost in the minds of our communities, particularly as it is a reflection of the customary law that has flowed down through and before the time of signing and entering into treaties. Some of the things that weigh heavily on our minds in looking at this pattern of impacts, from the Indian residential school system to colonization post-treaty and so forth, are reflected in harsh statistics.
For example, 88% of aboriginal persons in Stoney Mountain Penitentiary were children in care at some time, in the child and family system. That's an enormous burden that it places on families, communities, and care providers to recognize that once persons find themselves diverted in that direction in life, in many respects their life becomes, to some extent, derailed.
It takes an enormous amount of effort to bring persons back into the standards and to reconcile them with their own community. We're faced with that. We see these linkages between persons who were abused as children in the residential school system and have become abusers of members of their own family, and we're grappling with that.
So when we say that it's a community-driven preventative and restorative justice approach, an enormous amount of weight is placed on integrating the effects of all of those elements and on creating a community that provides for safety and security. When we say that it's a core vision that our communities should be the safest place for our citizens to live, then we must overcome all of these challenges and resolve all of these disconnects between the ordinary and customary flow of life and the circumstances that are happening. We must resolve this enormous disproportionality of aboriginal offenders and the enormous disproportionality of persons in the penal system who were themselves in care as children and so forth.
So we would agree with protection of the family being a priority, but the distribution of any proceeds received by an offender in prison should be arranged for between them and their family. That's an important resource for the family.