Sustainable Development Strategy 2007-2010

Our Vision

Our Mandate

The legislative framework governing CSC is the Corrections and Conditional Release Act (CCRA). Other acts, regulations, policies, and international conventions that guide the delivery of its services include: Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the Canadian Human Rights Act, the Criminal Code, the Privacy and Access to Information Acts, the Transfer of Offenders Act and the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners. As prescribed in the CCRA, the Correctional Service of Canada contributes to the maintenance of a just, peaceful and safe society by:

• Ensuring that the protection of the public is the paramount consideration in all decisions relating to the custody, treatment and release of offenders;
• Carrying out sentences imposed by the courts through the reasonable, safe, secure and humane custody and supervision of offenders with sentences of two years or more; and,
• Assisting in the rehabilitation of offenders and their reintegration into the community as law-abiding citizens through the provision of programs in penitentiaries and communities.

Our Mission

The Correctional Service of Canada, as part of the criminal justice system and respecting the rule of law, contributes to the protection of society by actively encouraging and assisting offenders to become law-abiding citizens, while exercising reasonable, safe, secure and humane control.

Our Values

The managers and employees of the Correctional Service of Canada are guided by the following core values:

Our Core Values

Our Correctional Priorities

Our most recent Report on Plans and Priorities highlights our core public safety contributions for 2006–07 and beyond, and also serve as our plan to achieve results in support of five correctional priorities:

1. Safe transition of offenders into the community;
2. Safety and security for staff and offenders in our institutions;
3. Enhanced capacities to provide effective interventions for First Nations, Métis and Inuit offenders;
4. Improved capacities to address mental health needs of offenders;
5. Strengthening management practices.

Program Activities

Recognizing the interdependent nature of all its activities, CSC has defined one overarching Strategic Outcome that highlights its unique contribution to public safety, namely that "Offenders are safely and effectively accommodated and reintegrated into Canadian communities." Three program activities support this Strategic Outcome:

• Care and Custody,
• Rehabilitation and Case Management, and
• CORCAN.

Corporate Services at CSC contribute to public safety results by supporting all three program activities. Accordingly, resources attributable to them have been distributed and allocated throughout all of CSC’s program activities. The Logic Model of the Sustainable Development Strategy 2007–2010 must therefore also be considered an integral part of CSC’s Program Activity Architecture (PAA).

The purpose of the Care and Custody Program is to administer a sentence through reasonable, safe, secure and humane custody. The program includes a wide range of activities that address the health and safety of offenders and has been sub-divided into four sub-activities, as follows:

• Security: To provide effective management of correctional operations that ensures the safety and security of staff, offenders and the public. This includes maintaining security within institutions and in the community, drug interdiction, appropriate offender placement and control practices to prevent incidents related to offender incompatibilities and risk.
• Health Services: To provide offenders with essential health care.
• Institutional Services: To provide for the basic needs of offenders, such as food, clothing, clean working and living environments, and canteen services that contribute to reasonable, safe, secure and humane custody.
• Accommodation Services: To provide suitable accommodation through technical, engineering and maintenance services related to facilities management including the planning, design and implementation of cost-effective construction.

The purpose of the Rehabilitation and Case Management Program is to assist in the safe reintegration of offenders into the community. This program has been sub-divided into three sub-activities and includes the following programs and services:

• Program Development and Delivery: To develop and deliver structured correctional interventions that address identified offender needs and contribute to successful reintegration into the community.
• Case Management: To provide for the assessment, classification, counselling and supervision of offenders both in institutions and the community.
• Inmate Pay.

The purpose of CORCAN, a Special Operating Agency (SOA)³ of CSC, is to aid in the safe reintegration of offenders by providing work opportunities and employability skills training to incarcerated offenders and, for brief periods of time, after offenders are released into the community. Giving a sense of purpose to offenders helps maintain a safe environment in institutions. Providing offenders with the employment experience and the skills they need to become productive citizens when they return to the community helps them succeed in their reintegration and reduces the risk of re-offending. As well, CSC research has shown that experience in the CORCAN work program immediately prior to release leads to a reduction in re-offending, particularly for those offenders who are on parole.

CORCAN operates workshops in 36 institutions across Canada in the fields of agriculture, manufacturing, construction and services. The CORCAN workshops operate in a business-like manner that takes into account the institutional setting and training imperatives. CORCAN emphasizes the establishment of links between institutions and the community. It also offers support services in 41 community employment centres across Canada to assist offenders in securing employment upon release.

Vision of Sustainable Development and Global Orientation in our SDS

In addition to maintaining a just society, CSC’s vision for Canada’s future is that our society continues to live in peace, safety and in harmony with our environment. As well as its main Strategic Outcome, namely that "Offenders are safely and effectively accommodated and reintegrated into Canadian communities," one of the ends that CSC has to keep pursuing is to ensure that its facilities and resources are managed in such a way as to limit the impact on the natural environment by supporting economic sustainability and social justice through its decisions and actions.

As described above, since Corporate Services at CSC contribute to public safety results by supporting all three program activities, we think it is appropriate that the Strategic Outcome of our SDS, namely “Contribute to a just, peaceful and safe Canadian society, respectful of natural resources and ecological capacities,” is integrated as part of Corporate Services’ overall role to support all CSC activities.

Therefore, in light of CSC’s essentially social mandate, its program activities already integrate social and economic issues that are consistent with the sustainable development vision, while the SDS focuses more on the environmental sustainability of the Agency’s infrastructure and activities. We believe that by integrating, communicating and then implementing the commitments made in our SDS 2007-2010 into as many of areas of activity as possible, we are promoting a concrete and global context of the vision of sustainable development from our departmental mandate, and we are encouraging our staff to use environmentally sustainable approaches.

Lastly, as you can see, the organizational commitments we have made in the SDS 2007-2010 (see logic model presented below) are consistent with the sustainable development goals of the federal government. We firmly believe that the overall contributions and results generated by our SDS, from both a socio-economic and environmental perspective, will make a difference. Within available resources for implementing our SDS, the commitments made in the Strategy will continue to foster an organizational culture consistent with individual and societal well-being. It is only through promoting the sustainable use of natural resources and respect for ecological capacities in our everyday actions that sustainable development can truly take root in CSC and Canadian communities.

³A Special Operating Agency (SOA) is an operational unit of a department that functions within a framework agreement approved by the Deputy Minister, the Minister and Treasury Board.