Commissioner's Speeches

30th Canadian Congress on Criminal Justice

Remarks by:

Keith Coulter
Commissioner
Correctional Service of Canada

October 27, 2005
Calgary Alberta

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Good morning. Bonjour à tous. Thank you, Dan.

Thanks also to CCJA for inviting me to participate as part of this panel.

I must say that I am feeling rather humble speaking to this audience for the first time, and as the first speaker, following the very eloquent Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, and a very entertaining and thought-provoking “freelance intellectual” and futurist.

But it is my pleasure to be here, in these still-early days as the new Commissioner at CSC and I have to start by telling you that even as late as 6 months ago, I would never have suspected my professional journey would take me to CSC.

But after having been called upon to take on this significant set of responsibilities, having thought it through very carefully from a personal perspective, and having made the commitment, I am now very energized and focused on positioning CSC to move forward from here.

Needless to say, given my background, some people expressed surprise at my appointment when it was announced.

Indeed, one former colleague told me she could not have been more surprised to hear that my new job was Commissioner, than if she had heard I was going to spend the rest of my professional life playing the bagpipes. I was thinking about that when I walked in here today to bagpipe music.

Others were interested in why I would make such a move. In this vein, the day I was appointed, after pointing out that I had been the Chief of the Communications Security Establishment in my previous incarnation, Mike Duffy made the comment on CTV that I must have done something wrong to have been put in charge of Canada’s prisons.

Let me say here at the outset that for me, the dots between my stint at the Communications Security Establishment and my move to the Correctional Service of Canada are easily connected because both organizations play such a critical role in protecting the safety of Canadians.

Before I joined CSC, I was very involved in transforming one of Canada’s key national security agencies after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Responding to those events was a national priority, and positioning my former organization to play the role it needed to play in the new public safety context was a very intense and exciting challenge.

A significant element in the federal government’s response to 9/11 was, of course, the establishment of the Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Canada. As you know, CSC is now an integral part of this new portfolio, which also includes the National Parole Board, the RCMP, CSIS, the Canada Firearms Centre and the new Canada Border Services Agency.

So I am very much at ease with the way that CSC is now positioned and look forward to continuing to work on the public safety agenda in my new capacity. And, although it might not be perfectly understood everywhere in this country, it is clear to me that everything CSC does — in its institutions and in the communities — is fundamentally about public safety.

Some of this is obvious to everyone in Canada. We have to exercise safe and secure custody in our institutions and effective supervision in the community.

But treating offenders in a reasonable and humane manner as we do this, and actively encouraging and assisting them to become law-abiding citizens, is not only the right thing to do from a human perspective, from a human rights perspective, from a just society perspective, it is also the right thing to do from a public safety perspective.

Indeed, this approach is fundamentally in the public safety interest of all Canadians because it is the best way to achieve the ultimate result we are looking for – the successful reintegration of the offender into our society.

In other words, how we handle offenders in both the institutional and community environments is critical to promoting public safety, as well as being an important measure of who we are as a people and society.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve spent time visiting CSC institutions, offices and centres across the country. I’ve been seeing front-line operations and meeting CSC employees on those front lines, whose sense of mission and passion stand out to me as a great source of strength for CSC, the Government of Canada and Canadians.

Here in Canada, we are fortunate to live in a society that has lots of room for differing views and perceptions. This means that there will be conflicting views about the correctional system.

But, unfortunately, sometimes the good news gets lost. Let me give you just a few examples from our last year:

• Overall, we saw a decrease in violent incidents and major disturbances within our institutions.
• 94% of approximately 14,500 offenders on conditional release were not convicted of a new crime while under CSC supervision. Of the other 6 percent, 5 percent were revoked with a non-violent conviction and 1% with a violent conviction.
• 99.98% of Escorted Temporary Absences and 99.68% of Unescorted Temporary Absences were completed without a problem.
• More Aboriginal offenders received reintegration support within Aboriginal communities, with 71 offenders being transferred to the community under Section 81 agreements.
• We provided employment training through CORCAN to nearly 4,000 men and to 80 women offenders.
• 8 more Citizens’ Advisory Committees were established in parole offices, bringing the total number of committees from 97 to 105.

In terms of rounding out the picture, however, it is clear to me that there are some areas where CSC’s approach needs to be strengthened:

• We need to strengthen our capacity to address issues of violence in our institutions and the negative impact on offenders, staff, family members and communities.
• We need to achieve better results with respect to higher-risk and higher-needs offenders being released to the community, which among other things will require a more responsive approach to the increasing proportion of offenders serving shorter sentences.
• We need to improve our ability to meet the needs of First Nations, Métis and Inuit offenders across the country.
• We need to enhance and integrate our capacity to address the mental health needs of offenders in both institutions and communities.

The most basic and important fact here is that our future is going to be different from the past because our offender profile is rapidly changing. For example, an increasing proportion of our offenders, both male and female, now have more extensive histories of violence, have more affiliations with gangs and organized crime and have mental health problems.

We also now have an increasing proportion of male and female offenders serving both very short sentences and life sentences.

The rapidly changing demographics of our offender population mean we now have to be more forward-thinking to position ourselves for the future. Linear thinking won’t get the job done. Let me share just a few examples:

More than 50% of new male offender admissions are now serving sentences of less than 3 years – a trend that has been increasing for nearly a decade and continues to increase. So we need to develop better institutional approaches and community supervision strategies for this population.

The proportion of discretionary releases is decreasing and the proportion of statutory releases is increasing. So we need to build better community supervision strategies for statutory releases that contribute to public safety, while addressing the rights and needs of all offenders.

18% of inmates are now of Aboriginal ancestry. So, we need to advance our agenda here more aggressively around what works with Aboriginal offenders returning to their communities in conjunction with First Nations, Métis and Inuit organizations and communities.

80% of offenders now come to us with some level of substance-abuse problem. So, we need to strengthen our response to the supply of drugs, the demand for drugs and the impact of drugs on people’s lives.

11% of the inmate population now have mental health problems, including one out of four women. So, we need to very rapidly strengthen and integrate our response to the mental health needs of these offenders in both institutions and communities.

Simply put, even with only a couple of months on the job, it is clear to me that, if we are to continue to make the kind of contributions to public safety that we have in the past, we will have to build evermore sophisticated and integrated approaches.

It will take a lot of good work by a lot of people to build the right approaches to meet these very serious challenges.

Within government, CSC will have to work evermore closely with our public safety portfolio partners, especially the National Parole Board and the RCMP, and with other federal and provincial government departments involved in the criminal justice system.

And, equally important, as we go ahead, we will have to work in closer partnership with many other organizations and stakeholders to deliver on our mandate. In this regard, I want you all to know, here at the outset of my time as Commissioner, that I understand and appreciate the commitment and contributions to safe communities of the many different organizations and stakeholders represented in this room today.

In my eyes, for an organization like CSC, collaboration with partners is absolutely critical to success. I know that CSC can’t achieve the results that Canadians expect and deserve without community organizations and agencies, our Citizens’ Advisory Committees, and our extensive network of over 7,000 volunteers.

I must say the CCJA is a particularly significant group for CSC since it brings so many stakeholders together to work towards developing a more humane, equitable, and effective justice system.
For CSC, it helps foster communication, collegiality, consensus and cooperation and has played a key role in the development of internationally recognized interventions and programs for offenders.

And it helps promote a healthy dialogue on key issues for us, and provides a forum to ensure an adequate challenge function.

We may sometimes have different points on specific issues, different reference points, in terms of the specific issues we are involved in and care deeply about, but I believe that CSC and, indeed Canadians are well served by this.

So, from my perspective, CCJA has been, and continues to be, an important driver in terms of helping this country address a very serious set of issues.

And there is no doubt in my mind that it will continue to play a vitally important role for us as we move into the future to face the kinds of new and complex challenges I have just described.
So I am happy to have the opportunity to connect with you so early in my time as Commissioner. And I look forward to working together with you to find solutions that help us achieve better results.

To end on a personal note, when I was appointed as Commissioner, a colleague of mine sent me a book called Impossible Jobs in Public Management. At the top of the list, which is of course why she sent the book to me, is the job of corrections commissioner.

In this book, the author argues that as corrections commissioners struggle with the burden of vague, controversial and self-contradictory expectations, most simply cope, hang on for a while and then let go.

And, he goes on to argue, based on his research, that commissioners are actually beating the odds if they “hang on” long enough to settle in, establish significant alliances, and orchestrate changes that make a real difference in institutions or on the streets.

Well to begin with, given that the offender population in Canada is changing rapidly, it is clear to me that “changes that make a difference” in our institutions and on the streets of our communities must be orchestrated.

But, if we are to get where we need to go, it is not, in my view, the commissioner of CSC, but rather all of us, working together in evermore creative ways, that must beat the odds to orchestrate the required changes. All of us, in other words will have to play our positions well if we are, as a nation, to find the right formula to move forward from here.

If we are to succeed, I know I will have to exercise very serious and determined leadership at CSC, and that CSC will have to pull together extremely well as a team.

But I also know that CSC will not be able to succeed on my watch without the help and support of our partners and friends. So I simply ask that you all continue to work with us with energy and commitment, as you have in the past, to help the federal corrections system succeed in meeting the challenges ahead — as it must — on behalf of all Canadians.

Thank you.