Leslie Reid

Executive Director, John Howard Society of Fredericton

We do corrections and community corrections everyday, so trying to put something together to talk about it became quite difficult. It was a focus that you could have taken anywhere and anyway, so it is really nice to see this many people and this many perspectives on the panel because it gives you as an audience a chance to see these different perspectives.

The John Howard Society has been involved in promoting and participating in community corrections for the past twenty years. As a community based agency, made up of volunteers, we believe that it is the communities right and responsibility to take on the commitment of reducing crime in our society. The only way to make our community, our neighbourhood, our streets safe is by being active, committed participants in the criminal justice system, not just observers. The traditionalists see crime and criminals as alien entities threatening to go out of control and engulf the good people of our community. In the past ten or fifteen years there has been a war going on in our communities, a war against crime. The get tough "throw those bad people over there and never let them out" supporters believe that the war is the only way we can stay safe. What is needed is bigger guns, harsher sentences, and more prisons; getting the justice system to do its job, keeping our community out of harm's way. The John Howard Society understands that there is a need for that "get tough" option to handle the minority of offenses, but we believe moreover that the vast majority of criminals seen in our courts and sitting in our jails could be managed by the community. The traditional option leaves citizens as observers; observing allows us to be at arms length from those bad people but never feeling satisfied with court decisions. We only observe the system from a distance, away from first hand information, the facts, and from the rational behind the decision.

The media continues to be the public's major source of information about crime. Public perception of criminals and criminal activity is largely dictated by the type of information provided by the media. However, content analysis of the news media has shown that violent offenses, compared with their actual occurrences, are over represented in news stories. Five percent of all crimes in Canada are designated as violent, yet they take up fifty percent of the newspaper stories. Given the public's reliance on the news media for information, its approach to crime coverage affects how powerless the public feels about crime. We can't stop the crime, we didn't make the sentences, so we are not responsible for the outcome. We have all heard the debates on the famous and local cases. The judge didn't have all the facts, the decision was too long, too short, too soft. Observing permits a system where the community is not considered and the victims are often, and always left out of the process. It is a system that always errs on the side of the offender; someone who has chosen to break our laws and place our communities at risk. By just being observers we forfeit the responsibility of crime reduction. We also give up the power and the control of being safe. Someone else decides what is heard in a trial, someone else decides the sentence of the criminal, and the victim is just a witness and not a participant. Does giving away our responsibility lower crime, clean up our streets make us safer ? Statistics say no!

Community corrections gives those impacted by crime the opportunity to address the causes and issues head on, in our homes, on our streets, in our cars; where we work and live and play. If the community is to have a chance for success, the factors which reduce crime can not be imposed from the outside. They must emerge from changes inside the community, and in the people that make up that community. Community corrections changes a lose-lose system into a win-win process through participation by all rather than by a selected few. It is a process where the offender is responsible for his or her actions; obligated to explain why they committed the offence; where the offender must state what he or she is going to do to restore safety in that community, not sitting while someone else speaks the words and defends the actions; being committed to a set of goals which works towards restoring justice, not waiting for someone else to determine his or her future, most likely sitting in a correctional facility and costing that community a second time in tax dollars.

Community corrections entitles the victim to an opportunity to express their feelings, their fears, and ask that question of "why me?" directly to the offender; to be part of building the solution that has the victim moving towards a sense of safety, and maybe to begin the process of closure on that experience; to witness the completion of the offenders commitment of service, restoration, or financial enumeration instead of just being a witness for the state - an extension of the system waiting for that offender to come back out.

It is a process where a community works together to answer "why was the crime committed?" Was it a social issues, a personal situation, or a conflict that could have been addressed sooner and stopped before the crime was committed? It is also a process to assess how the community was affected as a whole, and to develop the options and alternatives that might lower the possibility of someone else committing that same crime. The community becomes the framework for promoting crime prevention and crime reduction. It is aware of the people who make up their community; their ages, ethnicity, culture and their concerns. It is able to develop pro-active programs to address those concerns, rather than forcibly trying to remove it. It focuses on creative problem solving, restructuring and action by the people who live in that community, rather than by those on the outside; addressing the community as a whole rather than just the needs of known offenders. With community corrections, the people of our neighbourhood take on the responsibility of being active in meeting crime head on. We see the problems and the reasons for them, and we have the knowledge to generate options and work to eliminate the factors that contributed to the crime. We are able to develop appropriate solutions which make our communities safer today and tomorrow.

However, be aware that although community corrections will save money in court costs and in correctional institutions, there is a cost. A cost not defined in dollars. The cost is that responsibility that we as individuals, as neighbours take on when we accept community corrections as an option. The responsibility which takes immense amounts of time and energy, involves sadness, hopelessness, and sometimes the helplessness of not being able to make the needed changes. The responsibility of knowing when the community should NOT be involved; that the traditional justice system is more appropriate for the specific crime; in creating and monitoring checks and balances so that the voices of the few do not outweigh the voices of the many; in following through when the offenders commitment has not been fulfilled.

This is where the justice system of today has the most important role - to lessen that weight of community based responsibility by providing the experience and support needed to create realistic guidelines, as well as support systems and evaluation tools; to provide assistance when the case is complex and may need the expertise and guidance from a criminal justice professional; to work with communities in training and development. I believe that the benefits outweigh the costs, because by being empowered through the ownership of crime prevention and crime reduction, communities are responsible only to themselves for their decisions good or bad; they stop being observers and become the initiators of change.

Looking around the room today I know that community corrections has already developed a strong force. Volunteers from the food bank, sexual assault centres and transition houses are sitting beside staff members of the Solicitor General, who are sitting behind members from both the universities. We are the community, and we are the ones that will make this a win-win process.

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© 2007 Atlantic Human Rights Centre, St. Thomas University