I would like to thank the members of this committee for allowing us this opportunity to speak with you today on this very important topic.
I started my career with the Correctional Service of Canada back in 2001 as a community parole officer. I did not start my career like most parole officers. I was hired off the street and did not have any prior penitentiary experience.
From the age of 12, I knew that one day I wanted to have a career where I could help people. In fact, this was ingrained in me by my grade 6 teacher who had predicted that one day I would become a social worker. Little did I know that my teacher was onto something at the time.
What I didn't know when I entered into my career with the CSC is the sheltered life I had lived. Learning to work with offenders in the community provided me with a new perspective on life. I realized I was fortunate to have never experienced or witnessed family violence, substance abuse, chronic unemployment, and so on, but many people do. I can tell you that this work has profoundly changed me and how I see the world.
While the work of correctional officers and the incidents they face on an ongoing basis are more sensational and easy to understand, the complex accumulation of trauma that is faced by parole and program officers is more insidious and difficult to define.
You are all aware that parole officers or program officers have been attacked, threatened, and even killed while on the job. The case of Louise Pargeter looms large for nearly everyone at CSC, a parole officer who was murdered while visiting a former offender in Yellowknife. It provides a devastating example of the dangers of this job.
While there's always a risk of physical safety, most of the trauma is a result of the cumulative effect of collecting all the bits and pieces of detailed accounts of trauma and violence related to the offenders. By reading these accounts, the employees we represent become secondary witnesses to rape, abuse, violence, and death.
Parole officers, like many of the other jobs performed by USG members who work at the RCMP and in the other agencies, spend most of their days reading detailed accounts of horrific acts committed by a person against their victims. These accounts are full of horrific, graphic content outlining the physical and mental harm done to people, including small children. Then parole officers read victim impact statements and relive the accounts of the offences from the victim's perspective.
In the words of one of the correctional staff employees that USG represents, I want to quote a fellow community parole officer about the impact of this work on her well-being.
“After becoming very familiar with an offender's history...it gets worse because you have to meet with the people, the offenders who were capable of doing these things. You meet with them and talk with them a lot. You have to offer them meaningful engagement, treat them with respect, offer support, talk to them, try to encourage them to change. Talk to them about horrible things. You listen to the offender deceive and rationalize and excuse their behaviour or malign and blame victims and then you have to calmly and rationally challenge them on these things. You are at war with yourself.”
“During all of this, you must empathize with the offenders to be effective, but you must never sympathize. Never compare your experiences, never cry, never emotionally react. Offer encouragement or verbal support, but not too much. Challenge the offender, but do not put yourself in harm's way. Model effective behaviour. Don't cross boundaries, don't give them a grip on you, show no vulnerability or it can be—and probably will be—exploited. Then you listen to the offenders' disclosures of their own trauma. Sometimes it's the first time they've told someone and they relive the trauma when talking to you. Stories of how they were abused, sold, drugged, neglected, and abandoned. How they repeat the cycle with others. They offer up those experiences and leave those with you, too.”
“You go into random homes to meet with offenders. You don't know who is there. You don't know if you have to beat a hasty retreat. You have no partner, no support. How is your car parked? Where are the exits, are there unexpected vehicles? You assess the person at the door: are they drunk, high, angry?”
“You do all this because it's your job. It's the right thing to do. You're trying to prevent horrible things from happening to anyone ever again in any way you can. You can't own their successes or failures, but you can't help but ask yourself what more could you have done when an offender on your caseload hurts someone else, robs someone, rapes someone, kills someone, kills themselves.”
“You didn't make that choice, but you feel responsible. It's your job to keep the public safe from the people you watch. What did you miss? Who didn't you call? What didn't you see? Imagine the stress all this creates every day. Imagine the changes in your brain over time. Imagine how your sense of safety changes. You are more watchful of the people you encounter, more weary, more prone to react quickly. You are more vigilant with your kids. Taking them to pools, public places, becomes more difficult after everything you've seen and heard.”
“Imagine when an offender starts threatening you.”
