Bill C-27 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) Committee on June 6th, 2007

[Dr. Larry Motiuk]

Yes.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Would you agree with me that we can study the criminal and likelihood to reoffend, but as legislators, and when we're looking at all sorts of legislation, our responsibility is also to look toward the victim? Would you agree that we would need to do that also?

[Dr. Larry Motiuk]

Insofar as understanding the victimization patterns of the offender, it's going to yield very important information to the estimation of risk. We know that. Also, in the research, we know that the dangerous offenders distinguish themselves from people serving long-term supervision orders on victimization in terms of who they select and as a group. It's part of an artifact of who we have as the pool to study, too, I have to be clear about that.

Indeed, victim relationship and victim numbers and characteristics are important to the examination and the estimation of risk for these individuals, because for dangerousness we need to understand the circumstances and context under which these situations prevail. It's part of the estimation of risk.

When we do assessments at intake on the offender population, we systematically gather information in this regard on each and every case, and particularly those who are involved in personal violence.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Very good. It goes down, actually, a double path, and that's very good.

The path that I was wanting to go down is the path of the victim as opposed to the criminal who wants to victimize a specific victim. When we were talking to some of the other witnesses, one witness in particular indicated, or there was an overt indication, that we need to consider the victims.

What I'm saying to you is, from the victim's point of view, a person who has exhibited antisocial behaviour towards not only a specific group—which I'm going to get into, hopefully, if I have a few moments—but in particular victims in general, we need to have some closure to their crime experience. Part of the closure to the crime experience is to know that the person who perpetrated the crime against them, him or her, will probably not be able to do it again, specifically or especially if that person has committed that crime before.

I guess what I'm saying is the criminal may be locked up—and you can comment on this, please—physically in jail, but the victim now is locked up in a continuous cycle of fear of being revictimized. I'm referring to those serious cases such as rape and pedophilia and their lifelong effect on the victim. The victim needs to know that at least the perpetrator, especially if it's a second or third time, and in this case we're talking about the third time, isn't going to reoffend.

So while we may concern ourselves—and I'm going to leave the terms to the side—with fear that we're locking up somebody physically, should we not be looking at making sure we don't lock up, emotionally, the victim for their whole life?

[Dr. Larry Motiuk]

I'll comment on the issue of victims in relation to offenders who perpetrated very serious offences. Victims do have some mechanisms, in terms of notification when situations are happening such as transfers from one facility to another or to different levels of security, or even for release. They also have mechanisms to appear before parole hearings, and impact statements are used all the way through in the evaluation or estimation of risk for offenders and at multiple decision points along the sentence.

[The Acting Chair, Liberal, Brian Murphy]

Dr. Bonta, perhaps.

[Dr. James Bonta]

I would just add something general on the psychology of victimology. I have conducted a number of studies to evaluate restorative justice programs, in which victims meet their offenders. Reading that literature, one of the things I learned is that, just as offenders do, victims differ in terms of what they need. Some victims really ask for a different kind of resolution to the prison they are confined to as a result of their victimization.

I agree with you that all victims want to make sure they are safe. For some victims, making sure someone is locked away in prison never to harm again is satisfying, but there are victims—and I have met them—who say, “This doesn't bring closure to me. I need to do something else.” So it's a very complex problem. There are studies in which victims, or the families of victims, in the United States have gone on to death row to meet the offender to bring closure to their lives.

[The Acting Chair, Liberal, Brian Murphy]

The meeting is almost on death row.

Mrs. Freeman, you have the floor for the last five minutes.

[Carole Freeman, Bloc, Châteauguay—Saint-Constant, QC]

Thank you for being here. I found your presentation extremely interesting.

My question is for Dr. Bonta.

In your presentation, you mentioned that more than 200 studies indicate that there are treatments available to prevent recidivism, and that these treatments can reduce the risk of recidivism by up to 30%.

Could you provide some further details on this matter so that we may clearly understand the kinds of treatments involved?

[Dr. James Bonta]

Just to be very brief, we now know that the most effective treatments have certain characteristics.

The first characteristic is that the treatment has to be of the appropriate intensity or frequency for the risk level of the offender, so higher-risk offenders require much more intensive long periods of treatment. In fact, low-risk offenders who receive intensive treatment show either no impact on recidivism or it actually makes them worse.

Second, we know what should be the targets of treatment: what should treatment programs be focused on? They are those risk factors that I spoke about before—pro-criminal thinking, social networks. It used to be thought that things like self-esteem were important. We now know that treatment programs targeting self-esteem only produce confident criminals.

We also know the third important factor is that the cognitive behavioural programs are by far the most effective. There are very many different counselling treatment approaches. If we have a treatment program that focuses on high-risk offenders, focuses on what we call criminogenic needs and on appropriate risk factors, and does so in a cognitive behavioural fashion, the research literature indicates, on average, a 30% reduction in recidivism when those programs are delivered in the community. The very same programs delivered within institutions have about a 20% reduction in recidivism. It tells us that the same program placed in the community is more effective than the program in an institution.

[The Acting Chair, Liberal, Brian Murphy]

Mrs. Freeman, is that sufficient? There are two minutes left.

[Carole Freeman, Bloc, Châteauguay—Saint-Constant, QC]

Yes, that will be fine.

[The Acting Chair, Liberal, Brian Murphy]

I would like to thank the witnesses and members of the committee.

This was the most enjoyable presidency I have ever had, and ever will have. Thank you very much.

The meeting is adjourned.