DO WE HAVE A PAROLEE PROBLEM?
Some say being home to more former inmates per capita than any other big city in Canada boosts Edmonton’s crime rate, but criminologists suggest it’s more complicated than that
Sometimes called a “dumping ground” for Canada’s violent criminals, Edmonton has more former federal prisoners per capita walking its streets than any other big city in the country, statistics suggest. The Journal’s Jonny Wakefield looks into the link between crime and the number of parolees.
Edmonton has more former federal prisoners per capita than any other big city in Canada.
The large population of former inmates, including parolees, has been blamed over the years for contributing to the city’s crime rate and tying up police resources. Edmonton’s been called a “dumping ground” for violent criminals from other parts of the country.
Criminologists who study prisons and parole say the link between crime and former prisoners is more complicated. But there’s no arguing that Edmonton has a high number of former inmates.
Across Canada, 8,712 offenders were under supervision in communities in the most recent fiscal year of 2016-17, according to internal statistics Postmedia obtained from Correctional Service Canada through an access to information request.
Edmonton had 623 of those, including full parolees, people on day parole, offenders under long-term supervision and people on statutory release. Only Montreal had more, with 913.
Per capita, Edmonton has around 67 parolees per 100,000 people — the highest rate among Canada’s big cities and nearly three times the national average of 24 offenders per 100,000.
“A lot of people might be surprised at this,” Edmonton police Chief Rod Knecht said, when shown the numbers during a December interview. “Do we have a bit of an over-representation in Canada? You could draw that conclusion from some of those statistics.
“But I would say we have a lot of parolees in the City of Edmonton.”
‘DUMPING GROUND’
In 2011, confronted with rising crime and a plan to add beds at the maximum security Edmonton Institution, then-mayor Stephen Mandel railed against the number of prison beds in the region.
“We don’t want any more prison space here,” Mandel said of a multibillion-dollar federal prison expansion plan. “We have enough, that’s quite clear. We bear that cost for the entire region.”
Mandel believed that by building larger prisons, the federal government was “downloading ” costs onto the municipality, requiring higher police budgets to keep track of offenders.
Kim Krushell, then a city councillor for north Edmonton’s Ward 2, went further, saying the city had acquired a reputation as a “dumping ground for prisoners across the federal system” and that this contributed to crime in the city.
By some measures, Edmonton has a disproportionate number of parolees, the Correctional Services Canada numbers suggest. The city is home to around 2.5 per cent of Canada’s population, but 7.15 per cent of federal inmates who are serving part of a sentence outside prison. It has double Calgary’s number of offenders per capita (31 per 100,000), and more than Toronto (19), Ottawa (27), Winnipeg (49), Vancouver (44) and Montreal (53).
Smaller cities and towns had higher rates. Thirty-five municipalities with populations below 250,000 had more parolees per capita than Edmonton, led by tiny Kentville, N.S. That town of 6,271 people had 44 parolees, equating to a whopping per capita rate of 702 per 100,000.
Another standout was Victoria, B.C., with nearly 218 offenders per 100,000. Two smaller Alberta cities — Red Deer and Drumheller — had more released offenders per capita than Edmonton.
WHERE PAROLEES END UP
Why does Edmonton have so many former prisoners? One reason is the number of prison beds in the area.
The Edmonton region is home to three federal correctional facilities, the largest of which is the 324-bed, maximum-security Edmonton Institution, located in the city’s northeast on Highway 15.
The Edmonton Institution for Women, near 111 Avenue and 178 Street, houses 167 low, medium and high-security offenders. The Grierson Institution, a minimumsecurity facility meant for 30 offenders, is located in the city’s core at 95 Street and 101 Avenue.
Parole and statutory release are designed to ease offenders back into society, instead of dumping them with no supports or supervision at the end of their prison term, said Anthony Doob, a University of Toronto criminologist.
Prisoners typically are able to apply for parole a third of the way through their sentence, Doob said, but only a minority are granted release. Most are let out two-thirds of the way through their sentence to serve the remainder in the community under conditions — known as statutory release. With very few exceptions, “everybody gets out at the two-thirds point or earlier,” Doob said.
Most parolees are returned to their home communities. While offenders are sometimes moved around within the federal system and released in another province, that is rare, he said.
However, some offenders from smaller Alberta communities might end up being paroled to the big cities, Doob said.
That’s in part due to halfway houses. Some former inmates are paroled to a halfway house, known by Correctional Service Canada as community-based residential facilities.
There are seven such facilities in Edmonton, tailored to specific types of offenders and meant to serve as a “bridge between the institution and the community.”
Edmonton has 199 halfway house beds set aside for Correctional Service Canada inmates. Calgary also has seven, but just 111 correctional service beds — roughly proportional to the number of ex-inmates in each city. The cities each have two parole offices.
The availability of social services is another reason one city might have more former inmates than another, said Chris Hay, executive director of the Alberta John Howard Society, which operates programs and housing for ex-inmates.
If you look at (the) numbers, people on some form of conditional release just aren’t a big contributor to crime in Canada, period. Anthony Doob, University of Toronto criminologist
“When they come to us on parole, we often have a difficult job,” he said. “Not just because they’ve had a lifetime of God knows what — gang affiliation, drug addiction, low education, poverty, no job, I could list probably 40 risk factors — but we also have the added bonus of dealing with all the crap that happened in prison, quite frankly.
“You won’t find any research that will support that incarceration reduces recidivism,” he added. “In fact, incarceration actually increases recidivism.”
EX-INMATES DON’T DRIVE CRIME
The perception that former inmates drive crime has its roots south of the border, where parolees tend to reoffend at a much higher rate.
Prof. Richard Berk, a statistician at the University of Pennsylvania who studies criminal justice issues, said around half of parolees in the United States are rearrested, often for serious crimes.
“That’s true pretty much across the country — sometimes a little higher, sometimes a little lower,” said Berk, who specializes in algorithms that help forecast the likelihood a former prisoner will reoffend. “It’s also true that the crime rate for parolees is much higher than the crime rate for the general population.”
In Canada, people on parole reoffend at a much lower rate. According to the Parole Board of Canada, the independent tribunal that decides whether to grant parole, nearly 90 per cent of offenders finish parole without committing a new offence or breaching their conditions. Less than one per cent commit a new violent offence while on parole.
People on statutory release, many of whom would have been denied parole, are more likely to reoffend. Correctional service statistics show that around 63 per cent of offenders in 2015-16 completed their statutory release without breaching their conditions or committing another crime.
“If you look at (the) numbers, people on some form of conditional release just aren’t a big contributor to crime in Canada, period,” Doob said.
PAROLEES TIE UP POLICE TIME
When Mandel (now running for leadership of the provincial Alberta Party) complained about the costs of prisons on cities in 2011, Chief Knecht was asking for $4.8 million to hire 65 new officers and three other staff.
One of the chief’s concerns was the number of parolees in the city, then estimated at around 400.
Almost six years later, Knecht said managing parolees takes up significant police time. Almost weekly, he said he gets a notice about an offender being released back into the community whom is deemed a threat to reoffend.
In the last six months, police have issued five news releases notifying the public about high-risk offenders — one violent offender, one violent sex offender and three people convicted of violent sex offences. All are being monitored by the police service’s behavioural assessment unit, which believes they are at risk to reoffend.
Knecht said police also have to step in if they find someone breaking one of the conditions of their release, whether that’s by being in a bar, or being out after curfew.
“All of a sudden, you’ve got a file, all of a sudden, you’ve got to arrest that individual, you have to process that individual, you’ve got to put a court case together because somebody’s going to determine whether they should stay (out) or go (back in),” Knecht said.
“If they violated their conditions, is it to the extent that they should be re-incarcerated? So it absolutely does have an impact on policing. There’s no question about it.”
CHICKEN AND EGG
Perhaps the best explanation for why Edmonton has more exinmates than other cities is the simplest — it had more crime to begin with.
In 2016, the Edmonton census region ranked third on the crime severity index, a measure of policereported crime. Occupying first and second were fellow prairie cities Regina and Saskatoon.
Demographics are often used to explain Western Canada’s relatively high crime rates. Alberta, for instance, is one of the youngest jurisdictions in Canada and the only province with more men than women (men commit the majority of violent crime).
“If people are on parole in Edmonton, the chances are probably they came from Edmonton originally,” said Doob, the University of Toronto criminologist.
“So in a sense they’re going home.”