Good afternoon.
l am Robert Bonnefoy, warden of Stony Mountain Institution, situated north of Winnipeg, Manitoba. I am here with Christer McLauchlan, security intelligence officer at Stony Mountain Institution, and Tim Van der Hoek, former security intelligence officer at Stony Mountain Institution and current senior national project manager, preventive security and intelligence, at national headquarters.
Thank you for the opportunity today to provide you with information on gangs and gang management in our federal correctional facilities.
Criminal organizations pose a serious threat to the safe, secure, orderly, and efficient operation of Correctional Service of Canada institutions. There are approximately 54 different types of gangs operating inside our institutions, with the majority of their members having had gang affiliations prior to their incarceration. As of January 2010, approximately 29% were serving time for drug-related offences.
CSC is taking a multi-pronged approach to aggressively combat the complex problem of gangs and organized crime and to manage, in particular, high-profile offenders who are involved in organized crime.
As Ms. Fox indicated to you yesterday, CSC is using an intelligence-led risk management model in which intelligence serves as a guide to operations. It focuses on preventive and proactive initiatives. We are working closely with our criminal justice partners, and we are ensuring complete, clear, and timely information sharing with our local, national, and international partners, stakeholders, police agencies, and communities.
The management of gangs is a complicated matter that will require further investments to improve effectiveness. CSC is seeing increased numbers of members and associates of gangs and criminal organizations due to an integrated approach to gang management adopted by law enforcement groups and agencies.
CSC's gang population inside our correctional facilities remains consistent with the gang demographics found in the community. That is to say that we face a myriad of gang types, such as traditional organized crime groups, outlaw motorcycle gangs, and street gangs. However, with the emergence of street gangs and similar types of groups, such as aboriginal gangs, the service has seen quite a change in its offender population, and more specifically in gang demographics.
As of January of 2010, 2,019 offenders under CSC's jurisdiction were identified as members or associates of a criminal organization, including gangs. Of those offenders, 65% were incarcerated and 36% were under community supervision. As of December of 2009, 491 were identified as members or affiliates of aboriginal gangs, the largest group type in CSC today, with the prairie region managing 87% of these aboriginal gang members.
The growth of gang members has created a number of challenges for the Correctional Service of Canada. They include issues of power and control through intimidation, extortion, and violence; incompatibility and rivalries between various criminalized groups; drug distribution within institutions and continued criminal links with outside criminal organizations; recruitment of new gang members and individuals to pursue extremist ideologies; the potential for intimidation, infiltration, manipulation, and corruption of staff; and gang leaders, through financial resources or external networks, attempting to interfere with correctional operations.
Although CSC normally promotes integration among offenders, the complexity of gang dynamics and the variations in their actual structures do not allow for a one-size-fits-all gang management strategy. Existing gang rivalries and incompatibilities sometimes mean that the service has to segregate or separate certain types of gangs.
The service assesses each situation individually and develops approaches and interventions at the local level that will be most effective. These include providing all gang members with an opportunity to disaffiliate from their gangs and taking appropriate measures to prevent gang members from exercising influence and power in our institutions or in the community.
The service is focusing resources on enhanced training of CSC staff in gang dynamics and awareness and in motivation-based interviewing techniques, particularly in relation to aboriginal gang members. In the prairie region, we are collaborating with our unions and law enforcement partners in the province of Manitoba to address aboriginal gang issues.
As the warden of Stony Mountain Institution, I am responsible for approximately 550 incarcerated offenders. In terms of our population profile, 204 inmates, or 38% of our prison population, are gang members; and of those, 158 inmates, or 77%, are members of aboriginal gangs. Compared with other institutions in the prairie region, we have the highest number of gang members at a medium-security site, the highest number serving time for violent offences under the age of 30, the highest number of aboriginal offenders under the age of 30—in fact, they account for one-third of our population—and the highest number of offenders under the age of 30 serving short sentences of two to three years.
Given the scope and complexity of our offender profile, population management has been an incredibly important tool in managing our gangs. Stony Mountain Institution is divided into five operational units—including four sub-populations—that are used to house incompatible gang members. Managing large numbers of gang-affiliated offenders becomes a daily challenge given its impacts on our operational routine. We need to ensure that we closely monitor throughout our institution the movement of incompatible gangs. Scheduling of programming and recreational activities also proves difficult, as we cannot integrate incompatible gangs with one another in programs or work assignments.
That said, through effective population management, we have been successful this past year in reducing the number of institutional incidents.
When managing gang dynamics, it is important to realize that the intelligence information we receive is fluid and constantly changing. It is imperative that we continue to monitor our institutional trends and ensure that we continue to gather and analyze intelligence information on a daily basis, both locally and regionally. As a result of this, two population reorganizations have taken place at SMI this fiscal year.
By staffing a third security intelligence officer, we have been able to focus on intelligence-led risk management. In addition to the local work on both gang management and population management, our security intelligence officers also work very closely with our provincial counterparts and local police agencies. This helps to ensure that we are looking at issues of gangs and gang dynamics in collaboration with one another, as opposed to operating in isolation. We are able to quickly share information and take an integrated approach to dealing with issues as they emerge.
In addition to the management strategies outlined above, SMI has also targeted correctional interventions to assist with gang management. We established the first Pathways unit in the country. Our Pathways unit houses 78 offenders and is devoted to providing a healing and traditional environment for offenders dedicated to following an aboriginal healing path.
The operational framework of the unit adheres to the principles of healing, as guided by elders and spiritual advisers. We offer aboriginal-specific initiatives, interventions, case management, and offender services. All unit staff receive cultural awareness training. The team takes a multidisciplinary management approach and it has been an effective intervention for offenders wanting to disaffiliate from aboriginal gangs, resulting in many offenders making a safe transition to minimum security institutions and healing lodges.
Thank you very much for your time today.