Public Safety committee  We're talking here about a case management team, which mainly consists of three types of employees: a parole officer, the parole officer's supervisor and a correctional officer. Sometimes, depending on the cases, psychologists, psychoeducators, specialized educators or even teach

Public Safety committee  I am a parole officer by training. All officers who work in penitentiaries will tell you, as I do, that the criteria for going from a maximum-security to a medium-security institution are easier to meet than those for going from a medium-security to a maximum-security institution

Public Safety committee  I honestly didn't hear the question. I'm sorry.

Public Safety committee  What I would really recommend is that the Correctional Service open its doors to the public more. People would then be able to observe what happens within the system and to see the work that's done on a day‑to‑day basis. For example, they'd be able to understand how a day goes an

Public Safety committee  When an inmate is transferred from one institution to another, whether in the same or another region, there's a complete change of team. The inmate winds up with a new parole officer, a new CX‑2 and many other new people who will be working with that inmate. Inmates thus do not

Public Safety committee  If my understanding is correct, you want to know what responsibility the former parole officer has toward the new parole officer when a transfer occurs. Is that correct?

Public Safety committee  The best practice is to communicate between the two teams. The files and important information are transferred. That's also the practice that's followed between institutions and the community upon release. So that's a best practice for transfers, and it's also an excellent pract

Public Safety committee  I can answer that question. Our members, particularly correctional program officers and parole officers, receive training based on ethnic issues. That training is given to them regularly, every year or two years. The statistics are known in the system and our members are informe

Public Safety committee  No, it doesn't happen often. It's quite rare. Generally speaking, the files reveal trends. Consequently, parole officers are able to work with the offenders and try to anticipate what will happen for them based on emerging trends. Is the inmate racking up offence reports and ins

Public Safety committee  Excessive workloads are still an ongoing problem. They were already an issue when I started my career in 1999. The workload of parole officers at the institutions is calculated based on numbers of offenders per officer, and that number has constantly risen over the years. When r

Public Safety committee  The same parole officer will make a recommendation to transfer an inmate, a recommendation for a temporary absence and, later on, a recommendation for release. In each of those cases, the officer has to make his or her recommendation taking into account all the important factors

Public Safety committee  I can answer first, if no one has any objection. The professionals we represent obviously want maximum independence and autonomy when developing their recommendations. That's what we want. I would say that public safety is a sensitive topic. The people at the bottom resent chan

Public Safety committee  Yes, we have to look at the case as a whole. We have tools that can be used to get results, whether it be the custody rating scale, which is used at the start of an inmate's sentence or when the inmate returns to an institution following a failure in the community, or the securit

Public Safety committee  I quite honestly don't have that information. All I can give you are the observations I've been able to make during my career. Parole officers handle a certain number of cases. In my career, that has varied between 25 and 30 files. A deviation from what's prescribed by the custo

Public Safety committee  There are two types of transfers for inmates during their sentence. Actually, there are three. First of all, there's the voluntary transfer. That's the one that's granted in response to an inmate's request. There's also the involuntary transfer, which is made at the request of th