With respect to the OAG’s findings and recommendations on inmate case management, the standing committee focused on four areas. These are: 100 percent case management assessments for inmates, access to programs, Mental Health First Aid, and reintegration coordination.

100 Percent Case Management Assessments for Inmates

The OAG’s findings suggest that the Department of Justice has made a policy decision not to conduct case management assessments for inmates with sentences of less than 120 days.

As observed by the Auditor General, this has left over half the inmate population without case management assessments, a situation exacerbated by the fact that inmates can spend months and, in some cases, more than a year in a facility on remand before being sentenced and, therefore, assessed. Without case management assessments, it is impossible for corrections officials to understand an inmate’s reasons for criminal behaviour, or to properly plan for their rehabilitation.

The standing committee finds this policy unacceptable and calls for the department to take immediate steps to ensure that all inmates are properly assessed upon their entry to a correctional facility.

The standing committee heard from the deputy minister that part of the rationale for the decision not to assess inmates with shorter sentences is because the level of service/case management inventory (LS/CMI) assessment tool involves a lengthy process which is not conducive to assessing inmates with shorter sentences. The standing committee is not persuaded by this rationale and encourages the department to adapt the tool or look to other jurisdictions (for example, Nunavut) to see how they are working with assessment tools.

Recommendation 5

The Standing Committee on Government Operations recommends that the Department of Justice take immediate steps to ensure that all inmates undergo case management assessments regardless of the length of their sentences.

Access to Programs

One of the most troubling aspects of the OAG’s report were the findings related to inmate access to rehabilitation programs. The Auditor General found that for inmates with sentences less than 120 days, only 36 percent had access to general rehabilitation programs and none had access to offence-specific programs. For inmates with sentences longer than 120 days, 87 percent had access to general rehabilitation programs, but only 63 percent had access to offence-specific programs.

For a department charged with the responsibility for rehabilitating offenders, these are very poor results. As the Auditor General observed:

“These deficiencies limit the department’s efforts to rehabilitate inmates and prepare them for release back to the community. For those inmates with shorter sentences – who make up about half of the inmate population – the department had not assessed the reasons for their criminal behaviour, nor had it assessed their literacy levels or intellectual functioning to develop plans for their rehabilitation. Without this information, the department cannot assess whether the programs it offers meet the needs of inmates. For the half of the inmate population with longer sentences, while the department identified rehabilitation programs to help address their criminal behaviour, it did not adequately deliver these programs.” (paragraph 12, page 4)

During the public hearing, the standing committee heard from the director of corrections about the number and variety of programs offered not only at the North Slave Correctional Centre and the Fort Smith Correctional Complex, which were the subject of the audit, but at other facilities across the Northwest Territories. While the standing committee was impressed with the array of programs offered, it wishes to stress to the department that these offerings, no matter how impressive, will not assist inmates with their rehabilitation if the inmates cannot access them or if their participation is not being tracked to ensure that the inmate is getting the right programs to meet his or her rehabilitation needs.

Recommendation 6

The Standing Committee on Government Operations recommends that the Department of Justice find innovative ways to increase inmate access to rehabilitation programs and to ensure that all inmates have access to the programs they most need to meet their rehabilitation goals.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to turn the reading of the report now over to my colleague Ms. Bisaro.