Good morning.
The individuals who come to the community largely have taken a substance abuse program in the institution that reflects the risk and the need that they represent. Correctional Service of Canada has developed what we call a community maintenance program. It's a generic maintenance program that addresses all of the issues that may have been dealt with inside the prison, so violence or family violence, and substance abuse, for certain.
It's a fairly lengthy program in the community. Essentially, it brings continuity to the issue for us to deal with the offender. He or she would participate in the program for approximately three to four months. It would be a daily program of perhaps two hours a day with a trained program officer in a group setting with about ten other offenders and they would be targeting the same sorts of issues.
While they're in the institution they're working on a self-management plan or a relapse prevention plan, a plan that identifies what the triggers might be, the attitudes, the beliefs that support the use of substances and consequently criminal behaviour, and targeting them thematically. Over that protracted period of time, in addition to the program itself, the individual is working with a whole case management team, a parole officer, and some community agencies.
In addition to that particular program, which we believe is very successful, we also use community contracting for substance abuse programming and others and we find they're quite helpful as well. Again, depending on the risk and needs of the individual, we will put them in an appropriate intervention.