‘Moving the needle’ on rural crime and justice
Alberta Justice Minister Mickey Amery held a media roundtable last month to announce a $1.2 million Alberta Community Justice Grant. The funds will be directed towards organizations that can aid in resolving family, criminal and civil matters outside of the courtroom.
The roundtable discussion was lively and wideranging as reporters jumped at the chance to ask him about crime and justice in Alberta.
After Amery’s grant announcement, the subject turned to rural victims of crime.
“The victims of crime program used to directly compensate victims of crime. I think that the program was somewhat flawed in terms of the ability to fund the number of victims we have in this province. I think those who did receive it did not receive the type of funding that would address the losses and damages that they incurred,” said Amery.
“The revised victims of crime program has taken sort of a community-based approach. What I mean by that is it’s using the funds account to help provide support and services to all communities in this province. We’ve moved away from directly compensating those individuals who have lost something as a result of crime. We’ve moved to a model that provides counseling and psychological support for individuals. The reason that we did that is we heard far and wide that victims of crime not only suffer a financial loss, but I think the bigger losses are those emotional, psychological, and sometimes physical damages and losses that they experience.”
Amery said there was no mechanism available in the old program to help assist people who were the victims of serious physical or sexual assaults or other violations, and no path forward in dealing with their emotional damage. The new program is intended to do that.
“Many of the municipalities and councils had never met with their regional Crown prosecutors. What I ended up doing was asking our regional Crown prosecutors to develop a policy whereby (they) now will reach out to our municipalities and councils and establish a relationship with them. This is going to achieve any number of advantages.”
“The first one is going to be that our prosecutors on the ground are going to actually speak to and hear from the city council and find out exactly what is happening. I know we’re responsive to having a mayor or a Reeve make an appointment to come talk to us about it. I think that an ongoing relationship is essential.”
He said another advantage in having that done is that the Crown prosecutors can inform the council about details about trends that are happening within the community.
“I think it’s important that the relationship stays strong, as it is between the police chief and council.”
He concluded, “None of these things that we talk about today, to be frank with all of you, are a silver bullet, but every one is moving the needle in a positive way. Eventually we’ll move that needle up and get to where we need to be.”