Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thanks for accommodating us. I'm pleased to be back before the committee and to have this opportunity to assist you in your deliberations on Bill S-6.
As you mentioned, Dr. Zinger is with me. I'll make a few comments, and then Dr. Zinger will join in.
Also, I understand that the committee has received transcripts of our previous evidence given before the Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs back in June. That being the case, I am very respectful of your time, and I just want to quickly summarize some main points from that previous testimony and then move right into your questions.
From the perspective of my office, this bill needs to be placed in the context of other recently enacted and proposed legislation that will result in a significant increase in both the offender population and the length of sentences being served. Cumulatively, these measures will impact on the rate, cost, length, and distribution of incarceration.
The average time served for a murder conviction in Canada currently exceeds that in most other advanced democracies. Imposing an automatic parole ineligibility period of 25 years for all offenders sentenced to life imprisonment will create additional infrastructure and care challenges to meet the needs associated with aging in a federal penitentiary. The cumulative and increasing cost of incarcerating more offenders for longer periods of time prior to parole eligibility will be incurred over several years.
Using today’s numbers, each additional year of federal incarceration costs an average of $100,000. By contrast, supervision in the community, when that is appropriate, is about one-quarter of the expense of prison.
I will now ask Dr. Zinger to provide a bit more context and perspective to these points before we move on.