Gayle MacDonald

Chairperson, Criminology & Social Justice , St. Thomas University

I share most of Sandra's reservations concerning community corrections, which some people may find surprising because community corrections are traditionally within criminological fields the purview of the left and feminists, and I consider myself to wear both hats. So its with an unusual kind of fervour that I come to this conversation here today.

I am going to address three questions in my talk: Why now, who will be eligible, and what is the definition of community. The rationale for launching community corrections programs cannot be based on fallacious logic. Such logic includes for example a rationalization, read economic rationale. Within the current fiscal climate I am seeing a disturbing trend within criminal justice rhetoric, which is to put corrections where it belongs, back in the community. This is disturbing not because I necessarily disagree with it, but because it does not fit well within the principles of sentencing eluded to by Mary Beth Beaton to which criminal justice currently adheres - that is rehabilitation, retribution, protection of the public, deterrents, and I would add an impressionistic principle of sentencing that is becoming more predominant is restitution.

Let me back track a bit. Correctionalist management has long favoured, sometimes logically and sometimes not, a retributed and protective view of incarceral sentences. That is to say, punishment of the offender and protection of the public were/are and will continue to be foremost in the public mind as rationales for incarceration. The reasoning for this line of thinking comes from: 1) correctionalists or managerial type of thinking, arguably the only way to run a prison, and 2) fresh from the public. Rehabilitation is at best an individual goal of some offenders, and if achieved usually is to their credit rather than the criminal justice system. As the old saying goes, "a boy goes into prison and either exits a reformed christian or a better criminal" (that was a joke). Any of the philosophical rationales for particular types of sentencing than, maybe be short changed by more practical goals, such as the security of the public. Sentencing, as a study on sentencing and armed robbery vases in the early 80's demonstrated, follows quite predictable patterns. In that study, one in which I was involved as a minor researcher, a rash of armed robberies on convenience stores in Montreal in the late 70's by a number of gangs received vigilant attention by police. Predictably the offenders changed local to Ottawa. We call this crime type of shifting displacement theory in criminological terms. The public demand for law and order and safety was immediate, effective and swift. Police stations and MP's were contacted regularly by the public. Within months the sentences for armed robbery - controlling for variables of the mode, use of weapon, physical harm to the shop owner - increased by as much as five years per sentence. In other words, the same type of armed robbery committed in Montreal and Ottawa five months later, within a year to two years later were getting that much more of a sentence. Taking over a five year period, this increase represented almost a five hundred percent increase in length of sentence over the usual sentence for armed robbery. All of this I present for the argument of the case that, given current public perception of violent crime - note I have said perception rather than rates - is increasingly less tolerant. The public will be clamouring for more and increased sentencing for offenders, especially violent offenders, and will be far less tolerant of community alternatives than ever before, particularly as Sandra pointed out they are losing jobs along the way. Couple that argument with fiscal restraint and the future looks pretty bleak.

My next argument - Who will be eligible for community corrections? Will for example, prisons be getting only the very worst of offenders to house, and encountering more double bunking, less staff, and less programming to boot. Just ask corrections officials in the states if you want to follow that recipe. Sandra has got a rather pointed antidote from her prisons in Texas. She tells her students you can always check the quality of a prison by looking at the condition of the offenders teeth - that's how bad some prisons are in the south. If we continue to put only the very worst, as we describe them, and house them together one of the things that works about prisons is that not all prisoners are the same - serving the same sentences for the same types of crime - they actually can get positive influences from other types of offenders. That notion can be thrown out the window. Double bunking has already happened. Renous within less than a two year period of time is double bunking to the point of about thirty percent. I went one year with my class and we visited the special protection units, which were empty at that time. The next year they had regular offenders in the special protection handling units which are designed for the very worst of the worst, were being used for far less incarcerated sentences.

On the other hand, if we want to be really progressive and release some fairly serious offenders into community based programs, how long do we think the public will tolerate this? I know this is a classic, correctionalist, sort of criminal justice dilemma, but it is a very real one. I just like to sort of point out the kind of differences in the way we talk about these things, if we want to talk about rights and especially victims rights, we can talk about the different types of victims. Victims of property crimes, for example are only too happy sometimes to sit down and have a "go" with the offender; they are often very anxious to let the offender know what they felt about it and they often can come to some reasonable solution. That is not the case with sexual assault victims necessarily, or other types of victims that affect specific victim groups. So not all offenses are equal and the same neither are the terms of impacts on victims. Before we get carried away with victims rights, we need to separate out whose victim, what type of offence and whose rights are we actually referring to.

This brings me to my third and final question, what is the definition of community? This is something with which I have struggled for a long time. I was involved in the 70's in diversion programs for youth, these ideas that we are sharing with you today are not knew ideas. For those people in the criminal justice system, they have been around for over twenty years. They come surfacing and wearing different hats and cloaks and calling themselves by different names, but these ideas have been basically there. That is what led to my first question of "Why now". We were with you in the 70's criminal justice system, we wanted these programs then and there was a great deal of resistance at that time. We managed to get community programs on diversion and all kind of alternatives, and yet the evaluation of those was mixed, was indifferent, was lapse at some point. Some of the things that actually did work never made it back into the organization of the criminal justice system, while some did.

What is the definition of community? If I can step back a bit to the fiscal argument once again, it appears that community means volunteers. Which is what citizen advisory boards really are. A lot of these new programs have citizen advisory boards as the community component. Those citizen advisory boards will be designing and setting the stage for what community corrections will actually look like. Into what pool of people will the criminal justice system be dipping for these people? Professionals outside of criminal justice? Most likely, these people are already to busy to serve adequately. Service providers? No matter where they are, service providers are over committed, under paid, and usually unable to afford the time or the money they may lose as a result of loss of clients due to evening meetings, for example. Professionals within criminal justice? Depending on the level of bureaucracy - just take one particular probation officer for example - they are over worked at every level of every province, of every jurisdiction.

So, where do we turn next? The business community? Only if it pays will the business community be necessarily involved. Whose left? Double income earners are not likely to have much time left over for volunteering. Even if they do, its not likely that they can commit much time to the tasks that are involved. The responsibility, as in community organizations in the past, usually involves a one person hiring, with inadequate staff, poor job descriptions, a board to report to, and enormous responsibility. Unless job sharing is seriously an option within this kind of structure, or responsibility rotates within a group, that hired person will be burnt out within a very short period of time, and the ethics of the whole project can be at risk.

I would like to end on the same note that was addressed earlier. I think we need to address the reasons why crime occurs. Ask us as criminologists, we know the reasons why crime occurs. We can prevent crime. There have been demonstrated proven studies over the years to indicate that for particular types of crime and particular types of offenders there are particular strategies that work. Let's not pretend that we are inventing something new here. Let's recognize that we are reinventing the wheel and lets define every spoke on that wheel before we get on that jolly ride. Thank you.

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© 2007 Atlantic Human Rights Centre, St. Thomas University