Mr. Chair, I guess I'll start at the back end of this issue, which is that more than 50% of indigenous offenders, when they are released from federal penitentiaries, are coming out of either medium or maximum security institutions. They are coming out at their statutory release date, which is two-thirds into their sentence. That means they have only that one-third of their sentence to be under supervision. The department, Correctional Service Canada, is not preparing them for parole early in their sentence. If they were being prepared for parole, they would be able to come out in a more gradual, supervised way to make that transition back into the community.
One thing to remember is that in order for an offender to get parole, they need to have at least gotten down to a minimum-security facility, but what's happening is that these people are not getting their correctional programming in a timely manner, so they are not being prepared for parole. Many of them are staying at those higher-level security institutions, so when they come out, more than 50% of them are coming out from medium or maximum security right back into the community, with that shorter period of time under supervision.
It starts, though, right from the very beginning, when they come in the door, because there are certain pieces of information that the Correctional Service has said they need in order to be able to assign the right level of security to a particular offender, and they are not getting all of that information. In fact, we found that, in a sample of 45 files that we looked at, only in one case was it clear that they had received all the information they should have received to be able to make that assessment.
Then, they have a tool that they use to assign the individual to a security level and also to assign correctional programming to that individual, but the tool was designed only for assigning a level of security. It wasn't built for dealing with what the right programming for an offender is, particularly an indigenous offender with a different cultural and aboriginal social history.
Right from the very beginning, they may be assigned to a higher level of security than necessary and to more programming than necessary, and the programs don't start on time. Therefore, they are not getting prepared for parole. I think the numbers were that only 31% of them are prepared for parole, compared to 48% of non-indigenous offenders, at the earliest possible date they are eligible for parole.