Community Supervision—Correctional Service Canada

Opening Statement to the Standing Committee on Public Accounts

Community Supervision—Correctional Service Canada

(Report 6—2018 Fall Reports of the Auditor General of Canada)

19 February 2019

Andrew Hayes
Deputy Auditor General

Mr. Chair, thank you for this opportunity to present the results of our report on community supervision. Joining me is Nicholas Swales, the Principal responsible for this audit.

Most offenders become eligible for release before their sentences end, serving a portion of their sentences under supervision in the community. As of April 2018, almost 40% of all federal offenders were supervised in the community. The number of offenders in the community increased substantially between 2013 and 2018, and Correctional Service Canada anticipates that this number will keep growing.

This audit looked at Correctional Service Canada’s supervision of offenders in the community, and the Agency’s accommodation of them when required, to support their return to society as law-abiding citizens.

This audit is important because offenders’ gradual and supervised return to society leads to better public safety outcomes.

Overall, we found that Correctional Service Canada had reached the limit on how many offenders it could accommodate in the community. We also found that it did not properly manage offenders under community supervision.

In March 2018, nearly one third of the federal offenders on release required supervised housing as a condition of their release. We found that Correctional Service Canada did not increase the number of housing spaces to keep pace with growing demand. As a result, offenders who were approved for release into the community in 2017-2018 had to wait on average twice as long for accommodation than did the offenders who were released into the community 4 years before. We also found that some offenders were not being placed in their requested communities because of capacity constraints. This made reintegration more difficult for those offenders.

Furthermore, we found that Correctional Service Canada forecasted a need for more housing, but that it did not have a long-term plan to meet that need. This means that the housing shortages are likely to get worse.

With respect to supervising offenders, we found that Correctional Service Canada did not provide parole officers with all the health information they needed to design release plans for offenders.

We also found that parole officers did not meet with offenders as often as they should have and they did not always monitor special conditions imposed by the Parole Board of Canada as part of the terms of an offender’s release. By not performing these activities, parole officers were not always able to conduct timely assessments of progress against the offender’s release plan, or to identify changes to the offender’s needs or the risk that they present to society.

Finally, we found that Correctional Service Canada did not properly measure its success in meeting its mandate to reintegrate offenders into society as law-abiding citizens. The Agency measured only convictions that resulted in the return of federal offenders to federal custody. The Agency did not include data on post-sentence offences requiring the incarceration of offenders in provincial or territorial facilities. Without data on convictions recorded by other levels of government, the Agency had an incomplete picture of the rate at which federal offenders were successfully reintegrating into society as law-abiding citizens.

We made 5 recommendations, and Correctional Service Canada agreed with all of them. The Agency has shared with us its action plan, which includes actions and timelines for our recommendations.

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