Good morning. Thank you, committee, for allowing us the opportunity to present this morning.
It is my pleasure to be able to present to this committee Saskatchewan's groundbreaking work related to community safety and new views of policing.
At the same time that overall crime rates are dropping, as most of you are aware, Saskatchewan leads the nation in many categories of crime. This is not the kind of trendsetting that I or my cabinet colleagues would like to be known for.
Similar statistics have led to a call to action. In Saskatchewan, government, communities, and individuals are taking a good, hard look at the realities of the numbers, in both the volume of crime and the costs incurred to combat it.
We know that finding capacity in an increasingly demanding policing environment has become a challenge for jurisdictions across North America. At the same time, the costs of administering police services, or for that matter the criminal justice system, are on the rise. The crimes, and the criminals who commit them, are becoming more sophisticated and more complex. This is all adding up to a situation that is becoming untenable.
Saskatchewan's deputy minister of corrections and policing, Dale McFee, has spoken to you previously about the incredible work that's being done in communities across the province to build a foundation for community safety and wellness. As he's pointed out, it began with Prince Albert's community mobilization initiative to reduce crime in that city.
From a larger perspective, the Hub and COR models being used in Prince Albert, and replicated in communities across the province, is a testament to how we as Saskatchewan residents got our reputation for innovating. We have taken a germ of an idea and turned it into a movement that gains momentum every day. Of course we're very pleased with this.
In his last representation to you, Dale McFee told you that reports out of Prince Albert show, as a result of the Hub and COR models, that the violent crime rate for that city dropped 11.8% in the first year and 31.9% in year two.
As the minister responsible for corrections and policing, I can tell you how proud we are to be recognized nationally and internationally for this work. As a member of a government whose jurisdiction is seeing dramatic growth in our population and economy, I can tell you there is excitement in the air. Our belief is that our potential is limitless. But I can also tell you it's a bit worrisome. It's worrisome because we know we have to have the appropriate foundations for ensuring that this growth is sustainable, and that any potential consequences related to growth, like the implications of burgeoning job markets, infrastructure deficits, and increased crime, are mitigated.
In fact, just a few months ago, Premier Brad Wall introduced the Saskatchewan Plan for Growth. This plan contemplates an articulate, thoughtful approach to continued growth backstopped by appropriate resources for maintaining the stability of necessary economic and social foundations. These foundations include safe, healthy communities. This is where the Saskatchewan government's Building Partnerships to Reduce Crime approach comes in. Government support through funding, technical resources, and innovative services, supplied by my ministry, provides communities that want to create their own community safety and wellness mechanisms with the means to do so.
By its nature, the Hub, as a community mobilization process, engages representatives of the criminal justice system, police, and probation officers. It requires the involvement of representatives from social services, health, and education agencies. To be relevant, the Hub needs to take a cradle-to-grave approach, addressing the needs of at-risk individuals from the time their risky behaviour first becomes known until they “age out” of the system.
Experts have recognized that the entry point for individuals to engage in anti-social behaviour is around the age of 12. This risk continues until around the age of 24. It follows that the province's recently announced child and family agenda, aimed at creating strong, healthy families who can benefit from Saskatchewan's growth, has taken into account this piece when creating its goals.
If we can get to these young people early with the appropriate levels of literacy, mental and physical health, and family and community supports, we can deflect many of the negative influences that result in lost potential from our youth.
Of course, this discussion is all about reducing the cost of policing to governments at all levels. There is more that we're doing in Saskatchewan, and I'd like to talk about this.
As a result of our work on building partnerships to reduce crime, we are looking at the human resources our ministries are providing as a continuum of support. The question is, what do I really mean by that? Representatives of the criminal justice system cannot work in isolation from health or social services when we know that around 30% of the individuals arrested for committing what might be termed “petty crimes” have mental health issues. We can't be successful in rehabilitating offenders if we know that they can't get jobs because they can't read. We need to include our education experts in the mix.
I would like to think that we're taking a holistic view of how we're organizing government around tackling these social issues. Resulting strategies need to be client centred. The old paradigm of delivering programs to fit the needs of a bureaucratic structure is just not on anymore. We need to look at how citizens are best served and organize our administrative structures around those needs.
For the next few minutes I'd like to turn our discussion to other ways the province is seeking out ways to mitigate increasing and rising policing costs. One of the solutions we're currently examining is an expansion of our existing model, special constables, beyond their current limited application. Right now, in Saskatchewan special constables are trained to provide law enforcement in first nations communities only. The advantage here is that individuals of first nations descent who are trained as special constables for their home communities are familiar with their own culture and social norms and know the people they are working with. In the same vein, appointing special constables in other communities to enforce local bylaws or to take on lower-risk community policing duties frees up sworn police officers to do the heavy lifting with the high-risk crime and criminals. Extending that concept further across the criminal justice system, correctional officials are also looking at a similar model for how low-risk offenders are being supervised in the community. By using the special constable model as it relates to probation officers, other resources are freed up to provide closer supervision on offenders who are posing a greater risk to commit crimes that are obviously more serious or more violent.
The point here is that by encouraging these innovative applications of what might be seen as old ideas, Saskatchewan is creating new practices that are already anchored in success. In aiming to chalk up additional successes we need to ensure that we are collecting the most accurate and appropriate evidence. Saskatchewan is embarking on partnerships with members of academia in the social sciences to create a centre of excellence for community safety. Dale McFee will have the details on that pursuit. Let me say that such a facility, whether it be bricks and mortar or the interconnectedness that our Internet brings, will create the ability to attach to academic and forensic evidence to up our game in building and measuring community safety models.
I can tell you that Dale has the support of Saskatchewan's provincial government as he pursues the actions and initiatives he has designated as priorities for him and his team. I am hoping that in turn my government can count on you for your support so that we can extend the reach of Saskatchewan's solutions to reducing crime rates and their accompanying social and economic costs.
Thank you.
