Justice Committee on Dec. 6th, 2007

[The Chair, Conservative, Art Hanger]

Thank you, sir.

Mr. Bagnell.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Thank you.

We all acknowledge that for serious crime we have to find ways of doing things about it.

Mr. Poole, it's very interesting that it's youth in your areas. That will be related to my questions. But aboriginal people are incarcerated in higher percentages than they represent as a percentage of the population, and I'm wondering, in all these youth incidents you're talking about, whether there is a higher percentage of aboriginal youth involved in the incidents than their percentage of the population.

[Inspector Jim Poole]

That's not something I could specifically answer. We don't keep those statistics ourselves. I know we have a problem throughout the city, with certain geographical areas sustaining more auto theft, but I can't speak to exactly what the numbers would be on that.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

But there are some, obviously.

Do you have an effective aboriginal justice strategy? It's funded by the.... I know the justice minister is quite supportive of this. In our area it has much more success stopping these re-offences than the traditional system and a bill like this. Do you know whether there's an effective program in place in your area?

[Inspector Jim Poole]

I know, in speaking with the people who have been dealing with this strategy for quite some time, since its inception, that through probations and corrections the kids who are involved are getting more out of their counselling and/or intervention systems while they're in custody than when they're released to abide by conditions to attend. Ultimately, what a lot of the breaches are for is non-attendance at certain programs. I certainly know it to be true in Winnipeg that a lot of them are getting more benefit from them while they're in custody, but I can't speak to the exact—

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

I have a similar question in general on various types of diversion. Is that effectively used in your area? There was a very good speech last week by the Ottawa chief of police, which explained—I can't remember the exact percentages—that in the normal system we're talking about with this bill 70% of people reoffend, whereas in the diversion system only 40% reoffend, so it's much more successful. I'm wondering, because you have so many youth, whether you have an effective diversion program in your local justice system that is cutting down on re-offences.

[Inspector Jim Poole]

I sit on our committee, the WATSS committee, as a recent member—I took over this posting in July—and I know they are looking at streamlining that right now. It was a discussion at one of our twice-monthly meetings. The question has been coming up, how we can more streamline the process for diversion for first-time offenders so that the reports can go forth in a much more timely fashion, and then the kids get the intervention quickly. It is in place, but we're looking at streamlining it.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

It's also referring to alternative forms of sentencing, circles—all of these types of things—which are often much more painful for the offender but also have better results in the stopping of re-offences. I assume you have that system going on.

[Inspector Jim Poole]

Again, I wish I could speak more effectively on something like that. It's more in the bailiwick of probations and corrections than in mine, unfortunately.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Because so many of these youth you're talking about are involved in gangs, do you think that if we could somehow design a law that would have increased penalties and sanctions and efforts at making it worse for these events when they occur in the gang environment, that might be one way of attacking the problem? It doesn't seem to happen as much in isolation.

[Inspector Jim Poole]

I don't believe these are crimes committed for the gang. There are programs out there that try to give these kids options, and a certain amount of the money that went from the government toward auto theft in Winnipeg was to enhance programs for the level one and level two offenders. But I don't know whether, if there were something specific related to the gang involvement, it would assist.

[The Chair, Conservative, Art Hanger]

Thank you, Mr. Bagnell.

Mr. Ménard is next.

[Réal Ménard, Bloc, Hochelaga, QC]

First, I want to understand something. What do you mean by level three and four offenders? That's unintelligible to me.

I consider the statistic you present on page 1 of your brief very significant: the recovery rate for vehicles stolen in Winnipeg is 95%. And yet people seemed to be telling us that the national average was 60% and a little less in Ontario. That really means that people are more involved in stealing car parts and that they are not necessarily involved in organized crime rings, contrary to what can be observed in other provinces.

Explain to me what level three and four offenders are.

[Inspector Jim Poole]

Certainly, sir.

Level three and four offenders are basically assessed as to their prior involvement with auto theft and the justice system, and in terms of their likelihood to reoffend.

Level three offenders would be a slightly less risk-oriented group than the level fours. The level fours are certainly our worst offenders. When they're released, they're the ones on whom we do curfew checks, and we change the times of the curfew checks by changing our shifts. If they are to be in between 10 p.m. and seven a.m., then we'll conduct those checks; then, a week later, we'll do it substantially later in the evening--at two in the morning--and attempt to find out if they are abiding. If they're not, we breach them through probation services. Then they're re-arrested in short order and put back.

We see a significant correlation with numbers of vehicles being stolen when level four offenders are out in the general population of Winnipeg. Those numbers drop when they're back in custody.

[Réal Ménard, Bloc, Hochelaga, QC]

All right.

[Inspector Jim Poole]

In regard to the recovery rate, I'm going from comments from our commercial stolen auto unit, which is a separate unit within our stolen auto unit. It's a two-man squad. They investigate the potential of chop shops through Winnipeg and do all sorts of shop inspections, looking for vehicles that may have been revinned, as was mentioned earlier. They are telling me that our recovery rate in Winnipeg is around 95% in any given timeframe.

[Réal Ménard, Bloc, Hochelaga, QC]

Allow me to ask you one final question before we move on to the clause-by-clause consideration.

Not to amend our colleague's bill, but to maintain a specific regime of offences for motor vehicle theft, if this committee moved toward a maximum sentence, rather than a minimum sentence, would your police department be as satisfied, or do you really want minimum sentences?

[Inspector Jim Poole]

I think that the mandatory minimums would be a bonus for us in our field. We're seeing that the kids are getting more benefit from the probation services and the programs when they're in custody as a result of not adhering to their release conditions. We see a definite correlation with this as a potential deterrent as well, in that the numbers of vehicles stolen are down when these kids are in custody.

[The Chair, Conservative, Art Hanger]

Thank you, Mr. Ménard. That was a good question.

Mr. Masse is next.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

That was one of the questions I actually wanted to ask. I have a motion here from the Canadian chiefs of police; they're calling for it to be in the Criminal Code separately, but they're not calling for mandatory minimum sentences as part of that.

Your numbers are down. Are you indicating that basically they're only down because those people have been taken off the streets, so to speak, or are they down because your programs have been so effective that they're actually preventing some of the auto theft to start with?

[Inspector Jim Poole]

I think it may be both, to a degree. Certainly by targeting and monitoring, for a better word, the highest-risk offenders, and keeping stricter tabs on them, we're seeing, through the risk assessment, they're more likely to reoffend. We see on significant numbers of releases, when they're on bail, when they're due to come out, the numbers are rising again and we pay strict attention to them at that point to try to see. If we are able to breach them, then we put them back into custody. So I'm not sure—

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

It would seem to me, just on the surface, that what you're doing is working, so I'm trying to draw the direct correlation to how adding the mandatory minimums would depreciate you by even greater occurrences or whether what you're doing is getting extra resources to continue that work. Because if you look at your statistics, they're quite significant in reduction. And it's not just per month. Systematically, since November of 2006, aside from one small hiccup in January of 2007, there's a regular pattern of depression of the vehicles being stolen. It's a pattern, for sure.

[Inspector Jim Poole]

I agree. I think it's a combination of the two things. The programs are working well. Because this is certainly not an effort strictly by the Winnipeg Police Service. It's labour-intensive for our investigators. That's all they do. We don't spend significant amounts of time, potentially, on our clearance rates for how many stolen autos we can attribute to one kid, one youth, but we know they're being stolen. We get them on the one, and they're back in because of their reinvolvement.

I still think that in our cases, if there were a minimum, it might be viewed more seriously by those kids who are likely to become involved, maybe at the level one and level two areas.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Yes, and that's fair. That's your analysis.

I was listening to your testimony. You made reference that it's not organized crime, it's the youth. But you have one case where it seemed as if the person was out there teaching other individuals and mentoring. That almost seemed to be fairly organized. I would see that more like organized crime than I would see it being youth out there independently. This person is systematically setting up a mentorship or apprenticeship program.

[Inspector Jim Poole]

I agree with you. I was envisioning the organized crime aspect of it as for-profit, where the vehicles are being stolen and ultimately shipped or stripped. We do see some of that, but....

These mentorship programs the kids put on within their own groups certainly are a problem. When they are incarcerated together, ultimately when they come out, as you can see from the statistics sheet on attempts in January that were through the roof, that's them practising on specified types of vehicles, so they can become proficient in stealing them.