Evidence of meeting #15 for Justice and Human Rights in the 40th Parliament, 3rd session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was research.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Special Advisor, Infrastructure Renewal Team, Correctional Service Canada
The antecedents and consequences of various behaviours are contingent on what those would be.
Conservative
Bob Dechert Conservative Mississauga—Erindale, ON
What kinds of special rehabilitation programs were developed, or should be developed, to address the special needs of a hardened criminal, such as a 20-year full-patch member of the Hells Angels?
Special Advisor, Infrastructure Renewal Team, Correctional Service Canada
We know there are two primary areas or targets, or “criminogenic factors”, as we call them, for intervention. One is their criminal associations and their social interactions. They have strong attachments. How to disengage them emotionally or in any other way from those affiliations is a major problem and a target for intervention—and a great challenge from a rehabilitation and correctional treatment perspective. The other area is attitudes, values, and beliefs, particularly those areas that are supportive and have a high tolerance for violations of the law.
So these two primary areas are common in many of our violence prevention or substance abuse programs, as well as any other kinds of focused or targeted rehabilitation programs we have.
Conservative
Bob Dechert Conservative Mississauga—Erindale, ON
Are these types of criminals more or less likely to have substance abuse problems compared with the other prison population?
Special Advisor, Infrastructure Renewal Team, Correctional Service Canada
Less likely. In comparison with the other group, it's not to say they don't have some, but if you compared them with the matched group, they're less likely to.
Conservative
Bob Dechert Conservative Mississauga—Erindale, ON
You mentioned they tend to spend longer terms in prison but that once they achieve parole they're more successful as parolees.
Special Advisor, Infrastructure Renewal Team, Correctional Service Canada
I'll put a caveat on that. I've not published or done research on the post-release follow-up, in terms of how successful they were in the community post-release from prison. That's the next longitudinal study we would do.
Special Advisor, Infrastructure Renewal Team, Correctional Service Canada
I expect they do very well, relative to any other group, and demonstrate a very low rate of return.
Conservative
Bob Dechert Conservative Mississauga—Erindale, ON
And is that possibly because they were in the institution and in programming longer and therefore received the benefits of those programs?
Special Advisor, Infrastructure Renewal Team, Correctional Service Canada
That would have to come out in the research, which can control for those effects of whether they were exposed to, or participated in, that programming relative to those who didn't. That would have to be tested.
Conservative
Bob Dechert Conservative Mississauga—Erindale, ON
Do you have any idea what percentage of them return to their crime family or the organization they belonged to before they went to prison?
Special Advisor, Infrastructure Renewal Team, Correctional Service Canada
No, I don't have that information.
Conservative
Conservative
Bob Dechert Conservative Mississauga—Erindale, ON
I'd like to defer to my colleague, Monsieur Petit.
Conservative
Daniel Petit Conservative Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC
Thank you.
Good morning Mr. Motiuk.
As we are carrying out a study on organized crime, there is a question I would like to ask you. We have seen that drugs are the main source of income and returns for organized crime. You told us, or in any case we know, that there is a drug trade inside the federal penitentiaries or even, in certain cases, in the provincial institutions. What would you suggest as a solution to prevent organized crime from selling drugs in the penitentiaries, even though these are facilities that are closed and monitored by guards? Organized crime is selling drugs inside the prisons, which means that they also are on the inside.
Special Advisor, Infrastructure Renewal Team, Correctional Service Canada
The whole issue of eliminating illicit drugs from our institutional environment is a major task that we undertake constantly. We pour many resources towards interdiction as well as intervention. In recent years, we've been making focused efforts to eliminate drugs inside our institutional environments, by improving our technology, our intelligence, and everything from dealing with enhanced scrutiny during visits and at our principal entrances, to engaging more detector dogs, to searching and seizing contraband, and even to our intervention strategies to detect the presence of drugs, and also by reducing demand for drugs through our treatment programs. Probably the heaviest participation rate in our correctional programs is in the area of substance abuse. As we know, a significant portion of our population comes in with issues regarding alcohol and drug abuse, and we provide direct interventions to reduce the demand for those as well.
So it's a major focal point for correctional efforts, both in terms of security and case management and correctional rehabilitation and community supervision afterwards. This is always an area where we constantly need to work. To achieve results, we need to continue to strengthen our efforts in this regard and continue to look for new ways of tackling this problem.
Conservative
Liberal
Brian Murphy Liberal Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB
Thank you.
I think we're seeing a bit of a dichotomy between organized crime offenders and gang offenders. We know it takes a lot to obtain a conviction under the organized crime portions of the Criminal Code. Your study is very useful and very interesting in that regard.
I'll throw the following out to you, not so much from the point of view of your study but your overall background in corrections and your academic training. The picture you paint of organized crime offenders is far different from what we saw in our tour of western Canada, in particular, with respect to gang members and the way they might behave in institutions. A whole different set of tools might be needed in the institution for them.
I think the kernel of the question, though, concerns issues of rehabilitation and deterrence, which are in parts 7 to 18 of the Criminal Code. We often hear that youth, in particular, and maybe gang members, are not going to be deterred as much by the sentences as regular offenders might be. What I'm hearing is that setting rehabilitation goals for members of organized crime units isn't really going to work either.
Will rehabilitation tools applied to gang members, and I'm thinking mainly of younger offenders, be more effective than those used within the institution for organized crime members—as much as you can separate the two types of offenders?
Special Advisor, Infrastructure Renewal Team, Correctional Service Canada
Yes, I think you're correct in recognizing that there appears to be a dichotomy between the two groups. The group here that we studied were those who were convicted for a particular kind of offence in the Criminal Code in conjunction with other kinds of offences. As a population, they probably set themselves apart from the broader-based gang member, street-type individual we see in individuals who present more levels of dysfunction in their lives in terms of educational deficits, family dysfunction, cognitive problems, health issues, and addiction issues as well. So the broader-based correctional reintegration programs that we use to target substance abuse and violence prevention and expressions of that can address some of their issues, certainly, and have been, and we've been seeing some results in that regard.
As for this group that has uniquely distinguished itself in the level of sophistication it presents, and which demonstrates relatively less the broader array of criminogenic needs or deficits that we would be tackling in a traditional way, we may have to look at a different approach in terms of how we address these concerns.
Again, I'll liken it to completing some further research and doing the longitudinal outcome areas, so we can actually get a good understanding of what happened in the long run with these individuals, in order for us to make some changes in our approaches.
For now they participate in programs to some extent, but to a lesser extent than the other group. How they are doing will be borne out in terms of the results. We know they're doing relatively well inside the prison environments. We know the other group poses some unique risks in terms of managing within the institutional environments as well. But you are correct, they are turning out to be different, in terms of a group, from the ones you would observe traditionally involved in street gangs and other kinds of gangs that are out there.
Liberal
Brian Murphy Liberal Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB
Just briefly, if they're not convicted under the organized crime sections of the code, is there even a tracking of gang members, because it would be a value judgment, I guess?
Special Advisor, Infrastructure Renewal Team, Correctional Service Canada
Yes, they are. It's built into our assessment processes at intake and at admission--any gang affiliation or gang membership. Then it's verified with our security intelligence people, and we monitor that. There has been other research conducted on characteristics of interventions that work with those groups, and evaluations as well.
