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Let's Talk

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Let's Talk

VOL. 31, NO. 2

Keith CoulterCommissioner's Editorial

Enhanced Safety and Security for Staff and Offenders in Our Institutions

Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) employees from across Canada moved into fall 2006 with the shared objective of meeting our results commitments in our five strategic priority areas for 2006–07. Our focus on these priorities is a necessary response to the rapid changes in the profile of the federal offenders coming through our front door. For example, we are seeing more offenders with histories of violence and violent criminal behaviour, more offenders with previous convictions, more offenders with affiliations to gangs and other organized crime groups, and more offenders rated maximum security when admitted. This issue of Let’s Talk explores how we are working to improve our results in one of our key priority areas: enhancing safety and security for employees and inmates in our institutions through specialized strategies and programs.

For example, you will read about how our security intelligence officers use identification, surveillance and dynamic security strategies to deal with threats posed by inmates who have affiliations to organized crime. We have also developed specialized programs that address their resistance to changing this antisocial behaviour.

In an article on the Special Handling Unit (SHU), you will learn how CSC staff handle our most disruptive offenders. At the SHU, inmates participate in intense programming that strives to modify their violent behaviour, the goal being their quick and safe return to the mainstream offender population.

Keeping Drugs OUT focuses on the challenges of offender substance abuse, a problem with which 80 percent of our offenders are afflicted prior to arriving at CSC. As part of our fight against drugs — which includes eliminating the flow of drugs into our facilities — we are developing world-class, research-based addiction treatments to stop the demand for these harmful substances.

Of course, not all threats are physical. Frequent attempted breaches of electronic security both from inside our institutions and from external sources over the Internet mean CSC's Information Management Services staff are on the alert 24/7, protecting CSC's networks from these attacks.

I hope that reading this issue helps you understand how CSC employees are playing a key role enhancing safety and security at our institutions, thereby increasing CSC's public safety contribution. While this hard work and dedication in an operationally focussed business is always challenging and often under-appreciated, we need to continue to measure our progress against our business plan to ensure that we stay on a steady course to deliver the best possible public safety results.

The next edition of Let’s Talk will focus on another one of our key priority areas: enhancing the safe transition of offenders into the community. ♦

Keith Coulter
Commissioner
Correctional Service of Canada

 

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