Preparing Women Offenders for Release—Correctional Service Canada; Preparing Indigenous Offenders for Release—Correctional Service Canada

Opening Statement to the Standing Committee on the Status of Women

Preparing Women Offenders for Release—Correctional Service Canada

(Report 5—2017 Fall Reports of the Auditor General of Canada)

Preparing Indigenous Offenders for Release—Correctional Service Canada

(Report 3—2016 Fall Reports of the Auditor General of Canada)

5 December 2017

Michael Ferguson, Chartered Professional AccountantCPA, Chartered AccountantCA
Fellow Chartered Professional AccountantFCPA, Fellow Chartered AccountantFCA (New Brunswick)
Auditor General of Canada

Madame Chair, thank you for inviting us to speak about our recent audit reports on correctional services. We look forward to helping inform your study on Indigenous women in the federal justice and correctional systems. Joining me at the table is Carol McCalla, the Principal who was responsible for these audits.

We have done two audits of Correctional Service Canada (CSC) concerning Indigenous women, resulting in our 2017 report on preparing women offenders for release and our 2016 report on preparing Indigenous offenders for release.

Our audits focused on the timely access to programs and services that support the rehabilitation of offenders sentenced to two years or more by the courts. There are almost 700 women in federal custody and a further 600 supervised in the community. Indigenous women have grown to represent 36% of the women offender population. Although CSC cannot control the number of offenders who receive federal sentences, it can provide them with timely access to rehabilitation programs and culturally appropriate services to prepare them for release on parole.

Our audits found that CSC’s tool to assign women offenders to security levels was designed to assess men, not women, and it did not consider the unique needs of Indigenous women offenders. CSC also used this tool to refer women offenders to correctional programs, which is problematic since the tool was not designed for this purpose. As a result, some women offenders were held at a higher security level than necessary and were assigned to rehabilitation programs that they did not need.

We found that CSC did not provide women offenders with the rehabilitation programs they needed when they needed them. Most women offenders in federal custody were serving short-term sentences, which means they became eligible for release in the first year of their sentence. However, more than three quarters of Indigenous women offenders had not completed the rehabilitation programs they needed when they were first eligible for parole, because they did not get timely access to them. As a result, they had less time to benefit from a gradual and structured release into the community, which supports their successful reintegration.

However, we found that CSC increased the use of section 84 release plans for Indigenous women offenders. Under section 84 of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, Indigenous organizations or communities are part of the reintegration process. Indigenous offenders with a section 84 release plan are more likely to be granted parole than other Indigenous offenders.

But, we also found that access to culturally specific programs for Indigenous women offenders was limited at some institutions. For example, Healing Lodges were only available in one region and operated at nearly full capacity. Offenders who participated in Healing Lodge programs had low rates of reoffending upon release, yet CSC had not examined ways to provide greater access to more Indigenous offenders.

We also found that CSC used segregation to manage some women offenders, and about half of the women offenders placed in segregation were Indigenous. Despite a reduction in the total number of offenders segregated each year, we found that 20% of segregation placements were for longer than 15 days, the limit recommended by human rights groups.

Two thirds of federally sentenced women offenders have been identified with mental health issues. We found that CSC did not have sufficient capacity to deliver the mental health services that women offenders needed. Mental health teams were not fully staffed across the women’s institutions, and its one psychiatric hospital operated at or near full capacity over the past two years. CSC has not yet secured additional beds within provincial psychiatric hospitals to address identified shortfalls. We also found that CSC used cells on its segregation range to monitor women offenders at risk of self-injury or suicide, without 24-hour access to clinical treatment or support.

We are pleased to note that since our audit work was completed, CSC agreed to no longer place women offenders at risk of self-injury or suicide in cells on the segregation range.

Madame Chair, this concludes my opening statement. We would be pleased to answer any questions the Committee may have. Thank you.