Evidence of meeting #23 for Public Safety and National Security in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was treatment.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4 p.m.
NDP
Jasbir Sandhu NDP Surrey North, BC
Thank you.
Professor Nellis, you talked about integrating electronic monitoring with other programs. Could you elaborate on that a little bit?
4 p.m.
Emeritus Professor, Criminal and Community Justice, University of Strathclyde, School of Law, As an Individual
Let's take the intensive supervision and surveillance package that has been available for a decade now for young offenders. The surveillance and support is taken fairly literally, because the support consists of educational programs, or work training, and offender management program that address the young person's anger, their impulsivity, their attitudes towards victims, and their attitudes towards offending generally. There may be individual mentoring as well in that program. Those would be the supportive measures.
The surveillance measure is obviously electronic monitoring, but there is also an element of intelligence-led policing with these young people as well. Because they are known to be high risk—perhaps they're involved in drug dealing—the police will also keep an informal eye on them. Periodically, in the course of these sentences, the police and the social workers, and the police and the probation officers, will meet together to discuss this particular young person's progress. The intensity of the program means that the young person is subject to a high degree of practical activities during the day and electronic monitoring at night.
In fact, when we had the satellite tracking pilot in England and Wales in 2004, satellite tracking was used as part of the electronic monitoring. We didn't just use electronic monitoring to keep them in their homes overnight; we also gave them exclusion zones and forbade them from going into certain areas, such as an area where they had done a lot of burglaries, an area where they'd been known to be involved in fighting, or an area where they were known to be involved in drug dealing. One of the things you can do with GPS is create exclusion zones, which you can't do with conventional radio frequency technology, which pinpoints people's presence in their homes.
I think there was a view that this was too onerous a thing to do to juveniles, and in my opinion that aspect of the pilot in 2004-2006 ever stood a chance of being continued into the mainstream.
We're very comfortable, however, in England and Wales with electronic monitoring as a means of controlling the nighttime movements of young offenders whose daytime activities are controlled by the rest of the program.
4:05 p.m.
NDP
Jasbir Sandhu NDP Surrey North, BC
You're saying that if we're looking at rehabilitating the inmates or prisoners when they come out, in addition to surveillance, it's important to have programs that work together. You talked about how the probation system has to be integrated into surveillance, and that a government agency would work better than a private agency outside of the government.
4:05 p.m.
Emeritus Professor, Criminal and Community Justice, University of Strathclyde, School of Law, As an Individual
I firmly believe that. I firmly believe that the Swedish way and the German way of using electronic monitoring in the context of existing probation facilities is the best way to use electronic monitoring. I think a small element of surveillance in the context of a larger rehabilitative program is a perfectly sensible way to go about managing often quite difficult people.
I do not want the probation service to become a complete surveillance agency. I do not want to see electronic monitoring replace or displace perfectly serviceable rehabilitative measures. I think they can be combined well, and to some extent, in principle, we've combined them well in this intensive supervision and surveillance project in England and Wales. The principle of that particular project is a good one.
However, unlike Sweden and Germany, we have a private sector organization working with a public sector organization to make the package work. I ask myself why it is not just given to the statutory service. Why not just give it to the service that is already involved in rehabilitating offenders? Rehabilitation should be the primary aim here, even if you have to have elements of public protection at some points in the process. Electronic monitoring is best used as an aid to rehabilitation, not as something that stands on its own as a means of controlling offenders' behaviour.
4:05 p.m.
NDP
Jasbir Sandhu NDP Surrey North, BC
Professor Nellis, you talked about monitoring being used at some level for asylum seekers. Is that only in the U.K.? Do you have any idea what they do in Sweden and other countries?
4:05 p.m.
Emeritus Professor, Criminal and Community Justice, University of Strathclyde, School of Law, As an Individual
No, I'm afraid I don't know. I don't think it is widely used in Europe, and if it were, I think I would know about it. The networks of people I know who use electronic monitoring don't talk much about immigration uses and uses with asylum seekers. It's much more extensive in the United States of America, but I freely admit that I don't know very much detail about its use in the United States of America. I know that it is widely used. I know that it's seen as a significant part of the market by the private companies and that immigration is a market they have expanded into--they see it as a market--from the criminal justice market they have been involved in for 20 to 30 years, but I don't know enough about it. You would need to find another witness to help you with that one.
4:10 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kevin Sorenson
Thank you, Professor Nellis.
We'll now move back to the government. We'll go to Mr. Norlock, please, for seven minutes.
February 9th, 2012 / 4:10 p.m.
Conservative
Rick Norlock Conservative Northumberland—Quinte West, ON
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and through you, to the witness. Thank you for being here this afternoon.
I have a couple of quick questions. If you could give short responses, I'd appreciate it.
In your opening statement, I think you mentioned that the use of electronic monitoring devices and the studies on them had been peer reviewed, or did you say that they have not been peer reviewed?
4:10 p.m.
Emeritus Professor, Criminal and Community Justice, University of Strathclyde, School of Law, As an Individual
I didn't use the phrase “peer review”. Perhaps you misheard me. They were piloted.
4:10 p.m.
Conservative
4:10 p.m.
Emeritus Professor, Criminal and Community Justice, University of Strathclyde, School of Law, As an Individual
Yes, the Home Office's own research, the government's own research, was peer reviewed by the internal mechanisms the Home Office uses. It's not the same as an academic peer review system, but it would be fair to say that it was high-quality government research.
My sense of its limitations is that it focused only on the pilot. We've not researched electronic monitoring when it becomes a mainstream measure as much as when it is brand new. I think you're perhaps always more likely to get a better result on a pilot than you are when you study the mainstream use of the same technology. However, I wouldn't want to fault the research.
4:10 p.m.
Conservative
Rick Norlock Conservative Northumberland—Quinte West, ON
Thank you.
I gather that you're somewhat confident that it has been reasonably researched, although not peer reviewed in its purest form.
I'll move on to the meat and potatoes of this, then. What would the cost per unit be, and what is the per-person cost, using the British and perhaps the Swedish model? You can talk in terms of pounds, if you're more comfortable, or in Canadian dollars; a pound is roughly $1.50 Canadian.
4:10 p.m.
Emeritus Professor, Criminal and Community Justice, University of Strathclyde, School of Law, As an Individual
I actually don't know the answer to that question specifically, because the cost of it has varied over the years depending on the particular financial arrangements that the British government has contracted with the private companies, so there isn't an easy figure to put on that, and I certainly don't know what the figures are for Sweden.
I've heard that the current figure for GPS in England would be £2 a day. These would be the pilot projects that are running at the moment with persistent and prolific offenders. It's £2 a day to run a GPS tracking system on very high-risk offenders. I can say that because the person who is involved in that project gave me this figure quite recently, but other than that I can't give you a hard and fast figure on the daily cost.
4:10 p.m.
Conservative
Rick Norlock Conservative Northumberland—Quinte West, ON
Thank you. I know it's difficult to keep these responses short.
You're saying it's £2 a day for a high-risk person.
4:10 p.m.
Emeritus Professor, Criminal and Community Justice, University of Strathclyde, School of Law, As an Individual
Yes.
4:10 p.m.
Conservative
Rick Norlock Conservative Northumberland—Quinte West, ON
Would I be correct in saying that the alternative would be incarceration? Would you be able to give us your experience of the cost per day vis-à-vis incarceration? I'm thinking that the cost of incarceration would be substantially higher.
4:10 p.m.
Emeritus Professor, Criminal and Community Justice, University of Strathclyde, School of Law, As an Individual
To keep it simple and focused, yes, these people might otherwise have been in prison for longer than they actually were in prison, given that GPS is available to supervise them when they come out. If these people were not subjected to GPS, they might well be in prison for a longer period of time.
On the daily cost of imprisonment in England and Wales, I'm sorry, but I can't give you the daily cost. I need to do the sum; it's £35,000 to £40,000 per year, and no—
4:10 p.m.
Conservative
4:10 p.m.
Emeritus Professor, Criminal and Community Justice, University of Strathclyde, School of Law, As an Individual
Yes. No electronic monitoring comes close to that.
4:10 p.m.
Conservative
Rick Norlock Conservative Northumberland—Quinte West, ON
Thank you.
Of the three areas of remand, parole, and early release, which of these are the most appropriate, in your view, for electronic monitoring, or would you say that they all are? Generally speaking, if you had to make a quick response, which is the best, going from first, second, and third?
4:15 p.m.
Emeritus Professor, Criminal and Community Justice, University of Strathclyde, School of Law, As an Individual
The best is bail, because I can accept a stand-alone use of electronic monitoring if you have overcrowded remand prisons. The second best is a community penalty, if you use it with other measures. The third best is early release, preferably if you use it with other measures.
4:15 p.m.
Conservative
Rick Norlock Conservative Northumberland—Quinte West, ON
By “other measures”, do you mean other conditions, such as for a sex offender or a pedophile not to associate with people under the age of 18?
4:15 p.m.
Emeritus Professor, Criminal and Community Justice, University of Strathclyde, School of Law, As an Individual
No, I mean with support. You can build all sorts of conditions like that into electronic monitoring. In some instances, you can use electronic monitoring to monitor the conditions, but when I'm talking about “other measures”, I'm talking about supportive and rehabilitative measures alongside a surveillance technology.
I'm reluctant to support electronic monitoring as a surveillance technology alone. I prefer to see it used with rehabilitative and supportive measures.
4:15 p.m.
Conservative
Rick Norlock Conservative Northumberland—Quinte West, ON
Those measures, then, would include drug treatment, perhaps, or education, perhaps, if the person hasn't completed a minimum of high school education or other education, or perhaps it would include someone working with them to find a job. Is that what you're referring to?
4:15 p.m.
Emeritus Professor, Criminal and Community Justice, University of Strathclyde, School of Law, As an Individual
Yes. It could be drug treatment, alcohol treatment, mental health treatment, mentoring, educational work, and employment training. All of that is far more important in reducing recidivism than electronic monitoring by itself, but electronic monitoring can add an element of control to those social work measures that those measures don't have on their own.