Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
On behalf of Correctional Service Canada, I would like to thank you and the committee members for inviting us here today. It's my understanding the committee is interested in getting an overview of organized crime and criminal gangs within the context of the federal corrections, and I therefore thought it might be appropriate for me to be accompanied here today by our national manager for the portfolio of organized crime and criminal gangs for CSC, Mr. Luciano Bentenuto.
As you are aware, all levels of government are committed to addressing the challenges posed by offenders affiliated with gangs and organized criminal groups. The effectiveness of legislation to combat organized crime, along with a proactive approach adopted by law enforcement agencies, including the increase in successful prosecution of such cases, has resulted in an increased number of gang members or affiliates receiving sentences of two years or more, which, of course, the federal corrections is responsible for.
I've taken the liberty this morning of providing the committee with copies of our policy on the management of organized crime, and more specifically, our CD 568-3. In addition, you will find within your package a series of graphs that I'll be referring to as I walk through this presentation, which I hope will assist you this morning.
If you look at our first page here, on section 467-related offences, you'll see that since 1997, 303 federal offenders were admitted on a warrant of committal for an offence under section 467 of the Criminal Code. Of those inmates, 224 are still serving their sentences--151 are incarcerated, 72 remain under some form of supervision in the community, and one is in temporary detention.
In regard to the increase of 85 in 2003, as shown in the chart, I would add that, as Mr. Richmond pointed out, one of the prosecution's operations in the springtime of 2001 led to a successful number of prosecutions in that year.
It's to be noted that these 224 federal offenders represent 13% of our current offender gang population, and actually 1% of the overall offender population currently within the Correctional Service. For example, someone belonging to a criminal organization may be serving a sentence for offences other than the ones found under section 467 of the Criminal Code, and that's an important point for us in a correctional context in terms of the management of gangs.
As of December 10, 2006, there were 1,752 offenders who were identified as members or associates of a criminal organization in accordance with our commissioner's directives on the identification and management of criminal organizations. If you take a quick look at chart 2, the one titled “CSC gang population”, you'll notice that 64%, or 1,119, of those offenders are incarcerated, and 633 of them are under some type of community supervision at present.
In the past few years much attention was given to the outlaw motorcycle gangs and traditional organized crime entities; however, with the emergence of the street gangs and other similar groups such as the aboriginal gangs, CSC has seen quite a change in its offender population, more specifically with the gang demographics. As a matter of fact, the aboriginal gangs now represent the largest type within our service. As of December 10, there were 540 offenders identified as members or affiliates with aboriginal gangs. This is the gang group with the largest number of people; 90% of these members, or 485, are serving their sentences within the prairie region.
Street gangs have also increased to such numbers that they now represent a larger group than the traditional organized crime groups. The new reality is that street gangs are getting involved in illicit activities that were historically held by other organized crime groups. In addition, we're now starting to see a second generation of street gang members. They are older and get more involved in violent offences, resulting in convictions for more serious offences, warranting, of course, longer sentences.
One of the consequences is that the number of offenders affiliated with street gangs has increased by 74%, from 213 members in 2000 to 370 in 2006. The growth of gang members inside our penitentiary has created a number of challenges and has required us to make investments in a number of areas to stay on top of this issue at a time when other issues related to our offender population grow as well, such as mental health, hostility, and the more youthful offender that we seem to be receiving within our facilities.
Our response to this is basically found in a multi-pronged approach, which includes the development of policy that I submitted to you earlier. The key objectives of this policy are to recognize that criminal organizations pose a serious threat to the safe, secure, orderly, and efficient management and operation of our institutions and community operation units, and to ensure all actions are based on approved correctional policy and affirm our intolerance of acts of violence and other criminal activities committed by criminal organization members and their associates in our institutions or in the community while on conditional release.
We have launched, in all of our institutions, a secure network for storing and sharing information on: gangs; suspicious or illegal activities occurring in correctional penitentiaries and in our community; and threats to the safety of our staff, offenders, and the public. Next year we are scheduled to extend the secure network to the operational sites in the community.
The goal is to improve efficiency in responding to security threats by giving institutional security intelligence officers and their counterparts in the community increased intelligence gathering, analysis, and dissemination capabilities. This will allow us, of course, to safely share classified information with our law enforcement partners, including the Criminal Intelligence Service Canada, the RCMP, the National Parole Board, and other stakeholders. On an even larger front, the network will be linked to the Integrated Threat Assessment Centre, ITAC, which liaises with foreign intelligence organizations right now.
We also developed a certification course for our security intelligence officers, in collaboration with many of our justice partners, such as the police and CSE, justice and law enforcement agencies, in order to enhance our capacity to respond to criminal gangs within this correctional realm. Since 2004, 95 officers have successfully completed this specialized training program. These officers work in various institutions throughout the country and act as the primary professional resource for our front-line staff in regard to the issues of gangs.
In addition, specific gang information sessions have been developed to allow other staff who work with offenders an opportunity to familiarize themselves with the basic features of gang dynamics that they may have to face in their day-to-day duties. This includes a two-day program specifically designed for our parole officers who work directly with our inmates.
Currently a pilot project is under way in the prairie region, which includes Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba, and where our security intelligence officers have been trained to deliver gang information sessions to all front-line staff. A further expansion of this program will be dependent on the outcome of this pilot.
Notwithstanding all of our efforts, our capacity to respond remains somewhat limited. The ratio of our security intelligence officers is approximately 1:250 inmates, or one per institution. The reality is that there are currently no security intelligence officers in the operational community settings. While our SIOs monitor illicit activities that could potentially compromise the safety and security of our institutions, community SIOs would work in close collaboration with our parole officers to enhance the intelligence component within our community setting. That's why we are vigorously pursuing this avenue.
Finally, to address the increasing complexity of threats facing CSC, we need to develop a multidisciplinary approach that would allow for a coordinated integrated gang strategy within our setting to be inclusive of our law enforcement officers and key stakeholders. We decided to incorporate this approach within the premise of the intelligence-led risk management model.
You might be aware that police have coined the term “intelligence-led policing”, which involves the collection and analysis of information to produce intelligence products designed to inform police decision-making at both the tactical and strategic levels. It's a model of policing in which intelligence serves as a guide to operations rather than the reverse. It's innovative and, by some standards, even radical, but it is predicated on the notion that a principal task of the police is to prevent and detect crime rather than simply react to it.
At corrections we focus on managing the risk within the realm of corrections. We are now in the process of finalizing our national gang management strategy, which will be based on this intelligence-led risk management model that I just referred to. It's a model in which intelligence serves as a guide to operations focusing on preventive- and proactive-type initiatives.
The complexity of the gang dynamics and the variations in their actual structures do not allow for a one-size-fits-all gang management strategy. Although we promote integration among offenders so that they learn to live within the same living quarters—this also replicates the challenges they will face when they reintegrate society at large—we are aware that existing gang rivalries and incompatible issues may force us at times to resort to strategies that tend to segregate certain types of gangs. Therefore, our gang management strategy is one that is flexible enough to accommodate this reality, and one that also focuses on the individuals as much as on the groups they belong to. This means we have developed multiple strategies on prevention, intervention, and repressive models.
Also it's often necessary for us to mirror corresponding activities in the community. It wasn't too long ago that there were significant biker wars going on in the Quebec region. We had to respond accordingly within our population to make sure there was not a spillover within the correctional context. We worked closely, of course, with the police and with our managers in terms of sorting that process through.
For those offenders who are not affiliated with any criminal organizations or who have disaffiliated themselves from such a group, the focus will be on preventing them from engaging in activities that will predispose them to possible recruitment or initiation into a gang. Even though we aim to provide all gang members an opportunity to disaffiliate from their gangs, we understand that the more immediate objective in a correctional context is to get them to not continue their illicit activities once they are under our jurisdiction. Additionally, appropriate measures are taken to prevent them from exercising influence and power in institutions and in the community, and to prevent actions and circumstances that would serve to enhance or look at the image of the status of criminal organizations.
There have been some situations where opposing gangs must be separated, as I just referred to, in order to effectively manage our operations. When this occurs, gangs are housed in separate cell blocks to minimize and prevent contact and avoid potential gang-related situations. However, separation is not always a realistic approach to dealing with gangs. We assess each situation individually and develop approaches and interventions at the local level that would be most effective at ensuring the safety in institutions within our community.
There's no question that the issue of gang management within a correctional realm is a complex one, and the implications of it are certainly broad. The expected increase in the number of offenders identified as belonging to or being affiliated with criminal groups will continue to put pressure on our current resources, as these offenders pose various challenges to our direct operations. As an example, we have already seen an increase in the number of offenders with gang affiliations admitted with CSC for weapons-related offences. If you refer to chart 3, you will notice that there has been an increase of almost 50%. In addition, there has been an increase in federal offenders identifying themselves to criminal groups during the intake process at admissions at a federal institution. If you have a quick look at chart 4, again, you'll see an incremental growth that continues to move into the future years.
Some of the challenges we have, of course, are the power and control issues that gang members will sometimes exercise through intimidation, extortion, and violence within the incarcerated and supervised community populations; incompatibilities and rivalries among various groups; drug use and distribution within the institutions; continued criminal links with outside criminal organizations; recruitment of new gang members and individuals to pursue extremist ideologies; the potential for intimidation, infiltration, manipulation, and corruption of staff, which is becoming a concern of ours; infiltration of CSC and our partners and service providers; gang leaders, through financial resources or external networks, attempting to interfere with correctional operations; and our maximum security capacity to address growing numbers of convictions for serious crimes that are gang-related, including weapons-related charges, which are beginning to create operational difficulties for us.
As you can see, it's very much a complicated matter for correctional settings that require future investment for us to better be able to effectively manage this issue.
Again, I thank you very much, Mr. Chair and committee members, for my being able to speak here today.