I'm accustomed to being held up, because I've just spent the last two days in court, and you know what that's like, so no apology is necessary.
Let me just briefly tell you what I do and why I'm here. I was a professor at Queen's for 28 years. The law required me to retire in 2000 when I turned 65, but I've continued to do research and clinical work with sexual offenders. In fact, it's a bit broader than that, with a variety of offenders now. I presently run programs in two federal prisons for sexual offenders.
I'm also the director of treatment groups at a mental disorders institution in Brockville, which is a combined institute of provincial corrections and provincial mental health services. I provide the treatment groups for all of the offenders in that 100-bed institution, including the 25-bed sex offender unit.
I've been doing research on and treatment of sexual offenders for 42 years and set up the first treatment program in Corrections Canada in 1973 after a dreadful offence by a released offender.
I'd have to say that from the late 1980s, when Ole Ingstrup became the Commissioner of the Correctional Service of Canada, federal corrections was transformed into, in my view, easily the best correctional service in the world. Its goals were not only to properly protect the public by having secure facilities so that these fellows didn't escape--or at least very few of them--but also were about providing funding for a whole variety of rehabilitation programs that over the years have been shown to be remarkably effective.
I'm sorry to say that Corrections Canada have reversed their strategies over the last year and have markedly reduced the range of programs. In particular, they've removed all of the psychologists from providing treatment for sexual offenders, in spite of the fact that their programs for the very highest risk, high risk, or moderate risk have all been shown to be remarkably effective. As a matter of fact, they're the most effective programs in the world. I used to boast wherever I'd go. I consult in 26 countries around the world and I would boast about the remarkable facilities and the effectiveness of Corrections Canada.
So I'm very sad to see the efforts at rehabilitation being significantly diminished. I would say, from what evidence we have, that the programs as they are now going to be constituted will probably have little or no effect in reducing recidivism. And we have to keep in mind that the victims of these fellows are innocent women and children, for the most part.
I think when you're proposing to change the sentences for sexual offenders you have to consider what the goal is and whether it's just punishment, which is certainly the American model--and we only have to look at their prison system to see how remarkably ineffective and costly that is--or whether it should include the possibility of rehabilitation.
In regard to length of sentences, from the work by the Carleton University criminologists, led by Don Andrews, the evidence and the large numbers of meta-analyses we have indicate that increasing the length of sentences has a remarkably small effect, but it's in the wrong direction. It actually increases recidivism. I can refer you to that literature--not right off the top of my head, but I can provide you with references to that literature if you're interested.
I think if we're going to increase the length of sentences we have to be cautious about considering the details of why we're doing this. Given that we have a neighbour to the south that's readily available--having done just this--we have to look at the effects of that.
As for the effects of increasing the length of sentences, as I've said, not only does that appear to increase recidivism, it inevitably leads to--and is already leading to--overcrowding in our prisons, which has never been a problem, really. But it is becoming one, and it will become even more so. What this effectively does, even if you provide the resources to do rehabilitation work, is that it eliminates the possibility of doing any.
I've visited countless numbers of American prisons and they are so overcrowded that you couldn't possibly do treatment under those conditions. It's just an impossibility. As a matter of fact, the majority of the states just give up and make no efforts at all. But they at least admit that they can't do it, so they don't bother to try. That of course unfortunately ends up with a majority of sex offenders--or a large number, anyway--in sexually violent predator programs because they haven't been offered the opportunity to reduce their risk before they appear before those.... It strikes me that the Americans have a strange constitution, really; how that gets past their constitution is beyond me. Anyway....
I think you need to keep in mind that increasing the length of sentences is inevitably going to lead to overcrowding. It will reduce any possible efforts at rehabilitation. Corrections Canada has already gone down the road of seriously damaging their international reputation in effectively dealing with offenders of all kinds and, in particular, sexual offenders.
I don't think I have anything specific to say about any of the particular offences. I suppose some of them strike me as a bit unusual.
I think incest is rather unusual descriptor, really, because it encompasses adults who presumably have consenting sex with each other--siblings, for example--and who will get penned up as being viewed in the same light as someone who's molesting their daughter, even if their daughter is 17 years of age. I think that's a quite a remarkably different kettle of fish. I don't know how you can convey in the law those kinds of differences. It's in the hands of judges, I guess, and what decisions they come to is open to interpretation.
I think also exhibitionism.... Some exhibitionists, but remarkably few, graduate to more dangerous acts. I think we need to distinguish exhibitionists who offend against adults from those who offend against children, and of course you do, but for exhibitionists who offend against adults, remarkably few of them graduate to anything more dangerous. It seems to me that a minimum sentence of 90 days for a first-time exhibitionist is pretty stiff.
Already being an exhibitionist and getting his name in the paper is going to have remarkably serious consequences for his life, his family, and his children. Sending him to prison for 90 days is so trivial...what can happen in 90 days, of any value, is beyond me. That just seems to add a burden that seems fairly useless to me. So I would just discourage you from those minimums for exhibitionism even on summary conviction of the 30 days, so what drives that....
What we need as a minimum for rehabilitation efforts, and I know that your concerns are with more than just that...what we need for most of the serious sexual offenders, and I mean by that men who molest children at whatever degree of molestation it is.... That strikes me as a serious offence, and I would certainly like everybody who molests children to go directly to jail. I don't have any reservation about that. The question is, how long is useful?
What we need is for them to be in a prison for three years where we can provide treatment. Three years is the minimum requirement to provide satisfactory rehabilitation. That's because most of these men not only have problems relating to their sexual dispositions, but many also have problems of anger or substance abuse. So we need to get them into other programs, and I must say that those other programs have markedly diminished in scope and adequacy in the federal corrections system.
Then, of course, there's all the processing at the front end and moving them about from institution to institution. So we need at least three years. I would recommend that for sexual assault of adults and sexual assault of children it should be a minimum of three years. It would make more sense, in my view.
I've handed out some of those copies on the effectiveness of sexual offender programs in the federal system. I hope you have them.