Good afternoon. My name is Jeff Sandelli, and I began my career with the Correctional Service of Canada in 2008 as an institutional parole officer at the Stony Mountain medium-security institution, which is located north of Winnipeg.
I spent two years gathering critical experience to garner an understanding of the mechanisms related to an offender’s entry into and journey through the federal sentence. In a nutshell, this entry commences with intake assessments of offenders who have been federally sentenced, continues with opportunities for federal offenders to engage in various interventions to address their needs and capacity for rehabilitation, and is then followed by an assessment of the offender’s rehabilitation efforts and planning for potential community reintegration.
I subsequently transferred to the Winnipeg parole office in 2010, where I assumed the role of community parole officer. In this capacity, I continued to assist federal offenders on release in the community with their reintegration, connecting them with interventions and medical professionals, and bridging relationships with community partners to support their basic needs, housing and employment. At the same time, we were actively balancing the need to ensure public safety through ongoing engagement with their professional and personal supports, utilizing supervision tools to confirm compliance with conditions imposed and victim considerations, including consultation through the CSC victim services unit.
Sometimes this ongoing assessment resulted in federal offenders on parole returning to prison because their risk was too high to remain in the community. In other cases, federal offenders were able to establish sufficient supports to begin a more productive life, avoid recidivism and reach the expiry of their sentence under supervision.
I remained in the role of community parole officer until 2021, when I was elected as a regional vice-president for the Union of Safety and Justice Employees. As a regional vice-president, I represent hundreds of federal public safety personnel from northwestern Ontario to British Columbia and the north, in both urban and rural locations, working for the Correctional Service of Canada and the Parole Board of Canada.
As a national union representing over 18,000 federal public service employees across 18 departments and agencies, we are immensely proud of the work that Canada's federal public safety personnel undertake day and night, 365 days a year, to keep Canadians safe in every province and territory.
Within federal corrections specifically, USJE represents thousands of employees who serve in federal parole programs and support offenders with education, employment, indigenous-specific interventions and food services, as well as undertaking maintenance and administrative work.
Overwhelmingly, USJE's members are highly dedicated public safety personnel who largely work behind the scenes, often without recognition, to keep Canadians safe day in and day out, sometimes sacrificing their own mental health in the process.
Thank you.