First, I think the statement that we're not geared toward mental illness and that the conditions are appalling is a bit of an over-generalization.
In the past ten years CSC has made quite a bit of movement in addressing the problem of the increased number of mentally disordered offenders who are coming in. We're trying to identify them early in their sentences. Some of the institutions have what we call intermediate mental health units, where mentally disordered offenders can be housed in a more protected environment away from the general population so that some of the stressors and difficulties they face in the general population are minimized.
At least two of the treatment centres—the one in the prairies and the one in the Pacific region—are modern, state-of-the-art psychiatric hospitals. So at least in some areas the conditions are far from appalling. At the same time, movement can still be made. I work in a building that was built in the 1860s, and it's probably not the ideal situation for a lot of mentally disordered offenders.
To address the substance abuse and mental health issues, we try to identify the offenders in the institutions who are having difficulty functioning. Quite often they end up in segregation. They end up in acute crisis because of the stressors they face in the general population. So we try to identify those people and either get them moved from wherever they are to one of the intermediate mental health units or into the treatment centre, where they can be restabilized and taken out of the stressful environment they're in.
A lot of the people who come to the treatment centres stay, because we've identified that they can't function in the mainstream institutions. They're too fragile, low-functioning, or whatever, to be maintained in that environment. When we bring them to the treatment centre we stabilize them and get them functioning at a level where they can be maintained. We keep them at the treatment centre for the duration of their sentence, or try to get them transferred to a less secure environment where they can function better.