You could write a whole report just on this facet. The debate around the implications of mental health issues across the criminal justice system is hot. We discuss it at every venue I sit at.
Certainly from a crime prevention perspective, the focus of the crime prevention program is on youth, trying to understand the risks that we can identify early on with respect to youth and how and why they are acting out. Getting to them earlier and diverting them away from the criminal justice system is a really critical element of that. Looking at mental health issues in that context is certainly a big issue.
Following the summit, I went straight to Montreal and participated in a criminal justice forum where the topic was mental health. Again, we're trying to look at diversion within the criminal justice system, so it's giving the courts opportunities to look at people who have mental heath issues and trying to deal with sentencing and whatnot that is more innovative, if I can put it that way. Certainly it's giving tools to all aspects of the system so that they can address these kinds of issues rather than just simply judicializing people who perhaps should not be judicialized.
Within the Correctional Service of Canada, we've made some fairly good progress over the last five years in terms of looking at how we're managing offenders who have mental health issues. We now have mental health programming that 80% of offenders can access. We have beds available for one in 20 offenders who need actual day bed in-patient treatment, so there is lots of investing in this huge issue right across the whole spectrum of the criminal justice system.