Public Safety committee  We need to ensure that the Correctional Service of Canada is spending the right amount of its budget on correctional interventions. We've observed in the past that there is a huge disconnect between the small proportion of the budget that's actually spent on programs versus the p

Public Safety committee  Of course, Correctional Service of Canada deals with offenders sentenced to more than two years. I know that some offenders who are returned to penitentiary based on a new criminal charge may have remand status, and things get very complicated in terms of where they're housed and

Public Safety committee  Let me try to give you a real, practical example. The most senior person responsible for aboriginal programming right now is a director general. The director general reports eventually to a senior deputy commissioner, but that director general doesn't get to sit at the decision-m

Public Safety committee  Thank you for the question. We haven't talked a lot about community corrections. Community corrections is sort of the poor cousin of institutional corrections. We did do a major investigation into the operation of community residential facilities or CCCs, community correction

Public Safety committee  Gang management has been a long-standing issue for Correctional Service of Canada, as it is for other correctional services around the world. Keeping incompatibles apart, sometimes having to have units that are specifically designed for people who are involved in gang activity, h

Public Safety committee  Sadly, one of the things that we've noticed is that, with some exception, overall we have not seen earlier program engagement and more program completion translate into more positive recommendations before the board and more positive decisions by the board.

Public Safety committee  There is a very high concordance right now between the assessment for decision and the recommendations by the Correctional Service of Canada and the decisions that are ultimately made by the Parole Board, so you have two problems that combine. Number one is the decrease in the nu

Public Safety committee  The response has traditionally been that adding an executive to the committee specifically focused on aboriginal corrections would simply be too bureaucratic and too expensive. Having the Correctional Service of Canada complained about as being too bureaucratic is— There's an ir

Public Safety committee  Well, there used to be.

Public Safety committee  I think that there are lots of issues around other policy changes.

Public Safety committee  They're waiving it. They're too close to SR—statutory release—and they haven't completed the programs, etc., so there's a decrease in getting before the board. Second, you have negative assessments coming forward to the decision process—

Public Safety committee  —because of lack of completion of the correctional plan, and the Parole Board continues to be very risk averse when presented with that kind of assessment and increasingly makes negative decisions about release.

Public Safety committee  Double-bunking is down. It was at an all-time high during the construction period that the Correctional Service of Canada went through. There was a lot of dislocation and relocation and involuntary transfers. As you may recall, over the last eight years the Correctional Service

Public Safety committee  Thank you for the question about programming. Again, there is not one answer but several answers. I'm sorry for my lengthy answers, but it's complicated stuff sometimes. Part of it is the demographic of the inmate population. We're dealing with an inmate population, as I mention

Public Safety committee  One thing we could do about segregation is follow the law as it's currently written. Segregation is already supposed to be used minimally, as a last resort. The focus is always supposed to be on returning people to the general population as quickly as possible and eliminating any