Section 84 release plans are release plans through which CSC works with the community to supervise the release of offenders. Community organizations can be on reserve or in urban centres. We found they have been increasingly used for indigenous offenders, and generally they are very successful. More indigenous offenders who are under a section 84 release plan successfully complete their supervision than those who are not. We encourage Correctional Services to continue using this option.
There is another option, section 81 agreements, where healing lodges are available to indigenous offenders. There have been calls for CSC to increase the availability of healing lodges. Currently, there are only two healing lodges available for aboriginal women, in Saskatchewan and Alberta, and there are none in the eastern part of the country.
We have also made a recommendation that CSC increase the availability of options to provide either a healing lodge or those types of services to aboriginal offenders. We found generally that if there were small numbers of aboriginal women within an institution, they had very limited access to culturally specific programming, programming that has proven to be very successful in facilitating their reintegration.