We work particularly with those who are seen as the most difficult to manage in the system, because we consider it our responsibility to work with those individuals because of the work we've chosen to do. Particularly when we talk about the women with whom we work, what we see when we do take different approaches--not just longer sentences and more brutalizing environments--is that when women who have been in jail for long periods of time are coming out, if we've been able to assist them on appeal when they come out, they don't come back into the system. I was talking to a woman this morning who's been out three years; everybody predicted she would be back in, but as a result of intensive support and supervision when she came out of prison, she hasn't gone back in.
I think there are lots of examples that we do provide. They're on the continuum; they're not a lot different from what you see at the beginning, but as we're seeing more of those resources cut, I would suggest that if you now went back into the high schools you worked in, you wouldn't see all the support services you may have seen there. So it's not a big surprise that we're seeing more and more of those kids who are most marginalized, not feeling like they fit in. Unfortunately, the places they are fitting in tend to be the places we don't want to see them and that aren't advantageous.
I'd also challenge you...when I talk to the public and I ask the simple question, “If someone commits an offence, should they go to jail?”, most people may say yes, but if you ask them how they think that will assist in their not going back there, or how they think that will assist in keeping us safer, you don't have to scratch very far to have people give much different responses. Very few people, I would suggest, are willing to spend a lot of money on more jails, particularly when they look at the results, when we're seeing the resources sucked out of other places in order to fund those systems.