I think we basically had a physical environment that was conducive. It was a campus-style environment and it had a very large fence around it, so it certainly was secure from that perspective. We had an opportunity to start out with a small population to work with. We started with about 45, and when I left there were 144. It basically was a process of encouraging staff and gently relaxing what had come from a very restrictive environment at, which was a joint provincial and federal institution.
It was a slow process. I'd have to say to you that it is difficult for staff used to operating in a certain environment to move away from it. The continued positive reaction we got from the population was there--we literally did not have violence against staff. I won't say that we didn't have any violence. We had occasional fights between the women who were there, but it was much reduced. We had, as I mentioned, almost no self-harm.
It was just basically a process of continued engagement on the basis of the staff, so that it was dynamic security. They were out on the grounds and in the units with the women rather than sitting in an office. It was engaging the women in terms of what was going on in the centre, listening to them, involving them in the research that Dr. Martin spoke of, and continually expanding their responsibility. It wasn't without occasional problems. I'm not going to say it was perfect, because it wasn't. But we also noticed that our staff absence went from one of the highest in the province in terms of institutional staff to the lowest, at the time I left.
It is a fallacy that the more structured the environment, the safer it is. It isn't. The more confined, structured, and authoritarian the environment is, the more difficulty they have in living within that environment, and they tend to produce much more in the way of management problems. As a result, it's not a safe environment. It's unfortunate when institutions move more and more towards that--more technology, more security, more restrictive movement--because what you actually generate is a very dysfunctional population that presents a threat to the staff.