All right.
On behalf of the Correctional Service of Canada, I thank you very much for the invitation to appear before you today.
I'm going to highlight some of the challenges that are unique to the prairie region and, in particular, to my district. I would like to focus on the importance of the establishment and maintenance of the partnerships we work with. I will highlight for you a little bit about our strategy for dealing with gangs in supervised populations.
I am aware that tomorrow you'll be hearing from my colleague, the warden of Stony Mountain Institution. The warden will provide you with information on gangs and gang management in federal institutions. I will provide you with information about gangs and gang management more specific to offenders living in our communities on various forms of conditional release, including statutory release and long-term supervision orders.
Of the 1,126 offenders we supervise, 20% are of aboriginal ancestry. In my district right now, we have 92 gang members, which represents approximately 8% of the supervised population. I will provide information about the gangs in the communities in the prairie region and highlight for you some regional differences that I believe exist.
Criminal organizations pose a serious threat to our community facilities and to the safety of the public, our staff, and our partners. In the prairie region, we are particularly challenged by aboriginal gangs and Asian gangs. The largest group in organized crime in the Correctional Service of Canada right now is made up of aboriginal gangs and 86% of them are in the prairie region.
Of my population, as I mentioned, 92 have gang affiliations and are members, 42 of them are aboriginal, and 22 are of Asian ancestry. Of interest is the fact that these gangs are also made up of Caucasian members who are of mixed ethnicity. These gangs are more prevalent in the prairie region and have characteristics that are significantly different from those of other gang members and criminal organizations such as biker gangs.
In the prairie region, we have identified 1,095 gang members out of a population of 5,435. This represents 20% of our total population. Of this number, 207 are serving their sentences in the community, with the vast majority on statutory release. The gang members are concentrated in urban areas.
The Correctional Service of Canada works to ensure the continued safety and security of the public and our staff. In the community, we must place strong emphasis on intelligence gathering and information sharing with our partners to achieve this. To be successful, we must invest significantly in partnership development and maintenance with policing and intelligence agencies. It is also imperative that we work closely with the communities most impacted by gang violence--in this case, aboriginal and Asian communities.
The management of gangs in the community is a very complicated matter. Gang affiliations change constantly and are very fluid. New gangs emerge and offenders change their affiliations or claim to become disaffiliated upon release from prison. Despite these complications, it is of utmost importance that the Correctional Service of Canada be a partner in ongoing information sharing and gathering. In this way, we must protect the community and our staff. We are also aware that we must provide a wide variety of interventions to assist offenders to disaffiliate and to become law-abiding citizens.
The Correctional Service has invested significantly in resources to manage criminal organizations. Specifically, we have established positions in every parole district in the country to enhance our partnership. These have included security intelligence officers, criminal analysts, and community correctional liaison officers who are actually serving police officers working in our parole district.
We have established enhanced supervision units and enhanced residential facilities to assist us in managing these challenging offenders. In my district in particular and in Edmonton, we have placed parole officers in each of the police divisional headquarters.
Like that of our institutional counterparts, our gang management strategy consists of a multi-pronged approach. It is an intelligence-led risk management model that focuses on prevention and proactive initiatives. We know that it's important to obtain information early, at the time of sentencing. We know that we must discuss our supervision strategies with the police at various stages throughout the offender's sentence. We have police officers who are actively involved in our community intervention boards. Also, like the parole board, we do a lot of staff education and training.
In the community, we work diligently to assist offenders who want to leave their gang affiliations. However, our main goal is to ensure public safety.
I note that you will hear from two individuals who have great expertise in addressing the challenges presented by gangs in our community: Roy Louis and Hugo Foss.
Mr. Louis, of the Samson Cree, is renowned for his work in combatting gang violence in the community. He will talk to you today about some of those initiatives. Mr. Foss will describe the partnership initiatives he has led to address violence perpetrated in the community. As noted, he is a practising psychologist in the community and has a great deal of success in assisting offenders to disaffiliate.
In summary, it's important for me to leave you with a couple of messages. In the community, we have to operate in the absence of static security measures like you might see in a jail; we don't have bars and locks. We must rely, therefore, on intelligence and partnerships, both new and traditional. We know that it's important to have consistency and to have coherent information with like organizations to help us combat organized crime. We need continued support for this approach.
We recognize that there are different gangs operating in the prairie region that might be described as less sophisticated. The characteristics of aboriginal street gangs require more research. We know, too, that to be successful we need programs for prevention, programming, and suppression.
Thank you. I look forward to your questions.