Ex-official sees parole ‘demise’

With a major report on rehabilitation programs in Canadian prisons due Tuesday, a former top correctional official says the country must fix its broken parole system.

“I think what we’re seeing is really the demise of parole in Canada,” said Mary Campbell, the former director-general of the corrections and criminal justice directorate at Public Safety Canada.

“Parole has really become a sort of bargaining chip in the get-tough-on-crime movement,” she said in an interview with the Citizen.

The federal auditor general will table his wide-ranging spring report Tuesday. Among the issues it examined is whether Correctional Service Canada provides timely access to rehabilitation programming and interventions to help prepare offenders for release into the community.

Campbell said she worries that this doesn’t happen, in part because the Parole Board of Canada doesn’t function the way it was intended.

“Parole is not so much for the offender. It’s for you and me,” she said, adding that when used properly, paroling eligible inmates helps smoothen their transition back into society, which reduces their likelihood to reoffend.

The main test for paroling an inmate should be whether they are a risk to the public, Campbell said. Other factors are weighed as well, but ultimately if a candidate poses little risk to the community they should be let out under supervision.

“But the current parole board has substituted a different R-word: remorse,” she said.

“The parole board is now more interested in how sorry you are,” than whether you’re a good candidate for the program, she said.

As Campbell sees it, this causes two major problems.

First, fewer inmates being paroled is contributing to overcrowding in prisons, which the auditor general slammed the government for last year in his spring report. Second, it’s also making Canadian communities less safe, Campbell said.

“You have a lot of people saying that keeping people inside longer makes the community safer. It’s a lie,” she said.

Crowded facilities mean that more prisoners have to “double bunk,” with another inmate, something Campbell called an “evil practice.”

Last year’s auditor general’s report said double-bunking increases inmate aggressiveness and violence. It also means that inmates don’t get the right kind of programming on time, and aren’t being prepared well for release. And when they do get out, they are more likely to reoffend, she said.

Catherine Latimer, the executive director of the John Howard Society, agrees.

“The release rates have really declined. There’s no question that there’s been a reduction in resources for programs.

“When you have more inmates and fewer resources, they’re going to be spread more thinly,” she said.

“There are a whole bunch of factors that have combined to make the stays in prison longer,” she said.

Both said they want to see recommendations in Tuesday’s report aimed at improving access to prison programming.

Campbell said low-risk offenders shouldn’t be a priority for programming at all, which would help free resources that are better used on high-risk offenders.