Women Offender Programs and Issues

Healing The Relationship Between Federally Sentenced Women And Communities

Recommendations For Further Discussion And Planning

This is a concept worth exploring further, but under careful conditions of planning, preparation, and ongoing consultation, as well as supervision, "mentoring", monitoring and chronicling of the process so that it can be assessed and reviewed before further development.

It is recommended

• that circle experiences be initiated with two federally sentenced women in every region, one as close as possible to the determination of her sentence in her home community and one serving her sentence in the federal or federal-provincial facility; this will give each region some experience with the process and the identification of local resources

• that this undertaking be overseen and administered by the Interfaith Committee on Chaplaincy through its standing committee on women's spirituality

• that IFC be given the resources to establish a voluntary advisory network in each region for this purpose, to provide a preparation and training program for skilled planning and facilitation, to supervize, monitor, "mentor" and chronicle the developments and bring all the regional groups together for initial orientation, and one or two consultations

• that a national advisory committee assess and review a progress report on these experiences before any further development takes place.

This mandate would be in keeping with the well established role of Chaplaincy to assist offenders and their families to reintegrate into society and to reconcile with their communities.

Although only ten women will be served by this initial experience, many networks of citizens and criminal justice officials will be reached in the process, potentially stimulating the creation of a constituency of awareness and support in every region for a community strategy for federally sentenced women. It is felt that this particular strategy could

• facilitate the earliest possible release from custody

• maximize healing and successful integration into society

• reduce the potential for recidivism

• respond to the community's concerns vis-à-vis federally sentenced women as they near release.