Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I for one feel, I would say sorry but there are situations we find ourselves in and I do not think that we are really doing anything to change the flow of people in and out of the corrections facilities.
I think that by institutionalizing people, we have to place more emphasis on trying to prevent people from coming back instead of strictly putting them in corrections facilities and seeing the population increase when the demand on building new facilities is there.
We have to start concentrating on finding new means of dealing with people once they are incarcerated. We have to try to find a system to make them aware that what they are doing is not right, that there are better ways of living your life. We need to find preventative mechanisms so they do not continue to live a life of institutionalization.
I think that too much of that has happened in the North. Usually these people are, not marked, but they have this stigma put on them by the public that they are nothing but jailbirds, or whatever you want to call them. Something has to change to make these people aware that there is help out there.
One thing I see when I talk to a lot of people is there is no real mechanism for dealing with the problem once you are in jail let alone dealing with you when you get out of jail. It is that time that they have on their hands when they are stuck in a small community where people are unemployed and no real follow up to help them and make them aware that there are means of changing their lifestyles to make them better citizens.
Maybe the Minister can tell me what efforts are made between the Department of Health and Social Services and his department to work on this follow up of inmates, to try to help them to get on with better lives instead of finding themselves always stuck in the cycle of being in and out of institutions. Thank you.