Although an offender who commits a crime harms the victim and those close to the victim, the behaviour also affects the offender’s own family and members of their community. To ensure healthy and safe rehabilitation, it is therefore essential to support the offender, their family and their community members, so as to restore a climate of trust and balanced relationships.
Families of offenders
CSC has made available on-line the families of offenders support Portal, a major resource providing information on the services available to them. This is a way to break their isolation and provide these families with information about various initiatives that can help them through this experience, as well as existing support groups.
Private family visiting is a vital tool to maintain family links. Under this program, private family visits are allowed once every two months for periods of up to 72 hours per inmate. The actual frequency and duration of visits, however, are determined by the number of inmates participating in the program and the facilities available at the institution.
Visits take place in special family visiting units located within the institutional reserve in an area that provides as much privacy as reasonably possible. The fully furnished units have at least two bedrooms, a living room, kitchen and bathroom.
All offenders are eligible for the program except those who are: assessed as being at risk of becoming involved in family violence; in receipt of unescorted temporary absences for family contact purposes; or in a Special Handling Unit or awaiting a decision or have been approved for transfer to a Special Handling Unit.
Eligible family members are spouses, common-law partners, children, parents, foster parents, siblings, grandparents, and persons with whom, in the opinion of the institutional head, the inmate has a close familial bond.
International transfers
Imprisonment of a family member is already a trying experience; the additional problems this involves if the offender has committed a crime in a foreign country can be imagined. The offenders then face, in addition to their sentence of imprisonment, culture shock, isolation, the language barrier and inability to communicate with friends and family; inadequate food and medical care are also common problems.
To enable offenders to serve their sentences close to their families and support groups, Canada has signed bilateral treaties for transfer of offenders with a large number of countries. This means that Canadian offenders sentenced to imprisonment in a foreign country can, if they wish and subject to obtaining approval from the sentencing country and Canada, serve their sentence here. Naturally, these treaties work in both directions, enabling foreign offenders to serve sentences in their countries of origin.
Giving back to the community
Last, many offenders need to find a meaning for their experience. They often achieve this by giving something back to the community supporting them. Across the country, community associations, charitable institutions and non-profit organizations benefit from work done by inmates who grow vegetables for soup kitchens, or rejuvenate bikes for children in need.
Other offenders become involved in the community by meeting young people to talk to them about their experience and help them make good choices. Last, offenders who have successfully reintegrated into the community for a number of years help others who have just been released, becoming mentors and models for those starting again from square one, who want to reintegrate into the community.
This is often a way to rectify the harm caused to the community and show that safe and healthy reintegration is possible.
