I'll start, and then I'll ask Ms. McCalla to fill in any details.
Perhaps one of the reasons that we have 10 recommendations in this report is that Correctional Service Canada has been the happy recipient of two other audits in similar areas recently.
We did one on offenders in general, then we did one on indigenous offenders, and then this one on women offenders. We've gotten to know their processes very well, how they assess people when they come in, so, going in, we knew where some of the recommendations were going to be, because they are the same issues we've identified before. Then, on top of that, we've added recommendations that are specific to women offenders.
For example, I would draw your attention to paragraph 5.21, where we talk about CSC essentially needing to make sure that it is getting access to the information about an offender at the time the offender comes into the institution. In the previous two audits, we found that this was not happening all the time. Offenders would come in, and CSC wouldn't have all the information. The information existed. It was sentencing reports or judges' comments, those types of things. Even in this one, we still saw situations where Correctional Service Canada was not getting all of that information when people were coming in.
We've seen improvements, but I think there are parts of this process that need to be improved. I am encouraged by some of the things they've been talking about, in terms of what they're doing with women offenders with mental health issues. I understand the challenge they have with indigenous offenders when there are very small populations of indigenous offenders. However, it is still important that indigenous offenders have the ability to maintain their culture, because if they are put into an institution away from their community, away from their culture, we can't expect them to move down the road of rehabilitation if they are also struggling with a whole new culture. I think that's important.
It was also mentioned earlier that Correctional Service Canada has put in place a new electronic medical record system. I think that's a prime flag for us for a future potential audit. We would certainly hope to see that they are maintaining data integrity in that system, and that the system is being used in the way it should be, so that it will give them the output they expect to come from it. We've seen many times departments putting in place new systems but not making sure they're used in the way they're supposed to be used. I think that would be important.
Again, I want to make sure the committee understands that the reason why it's important to reduce the amount of time an offender has within the institution is that this increases the amount of time the offender will have under supervision as he or she moves to reintegration.
The worst types of situations are when people spend a lot of time in the institution and then have a very short period of time under supervision trying to get reintegrated. If a person is prepared as quickly as possible for parole, and that person meets all the conditions for parole, then they will tend to have a longer period of time under supervision and their reintegration is more likely to be successful.
I've said a lot of things. I don't know whether Ms. McCalla—