N.L.'s adult offender rehab process ineffective, inadequate and outdated, says auditor general

Newfoundland and Labrador's Justice Departmentisn't doing enough to ensure adult offenders can successfully and safely reintegrate into the community, according to a report from the province's auditor general.

The report, which lookedat adult offender rehabilitation programming and community reintegration in Newfoundland and Labrador from 2017 to 2019, found found policies were either deficient or non-existent.

"We found that adult custody policies related on rehabilitationprogramming and reintegration were incomplete, inadequate and outdated," saidAuditor General Denise Hanrahan on Wednesday.

In some instances, those inadequate policies may have put the public at risk, according to her report, which notesprobation officers sometimes failed to properly superviseoffenders after release and enforce court conditions. For example, some high-risk offenders never received home visits, even though they should have received one a month. Whenoffenders under a probation order failed to report as required, officers failed to contact them within two days in most cases.

Probation officers also failed to conduct appropriate curfew checks for most offenders in the audit's sample. According to the report, the officers didn't always monitor offenders' compliance with court-ordered conditions, or enforce compliance when those conditions were breached.

Despite court orders,officers were unable to enforce drug and alcohol testing for offenders because there was no program for sample collection and analysis.

'Appalling'

PC justice critic Helen Conway Ottenheimersaid the failure to enforce court conditions is "appalling."

"It all goes back to public safety. If these process aren't in place, if these protections aren't there, then how else can we have confidence that this government and this department is doing what it needs to do?"

Justice Minister John Hogan said he hadn't yet reviewed the full report, though his department has been in contact with the auditor general since the end of the audit.

"Certainly those are issues that are ongoing, and we look at improving policies all the time to ensure that the right policies are in place for best practices," he said.

The department also saidit accepts all six recommendations included in the report, which include updating policy, improving training and ensuring offenders can access appropriate rehabilitation.

When the pieces don't work

Security risk assessments, which are used to determine if an offender poses a threat to themselves or others and if so, the level of that threat were not always accurate or complete, and sometimes were not completed at all, both for offenders in custody and those on probation or with conditional sentences. Because they didn't have risk assessments, the offenders didn't always receive the appropriate rehabilitation programming,

"If an offender risk assessment isn't completed, it's difficult to do meaningful case management. If you can't do meaningful case management, it's difficult to monitor whether the offender got any benefit from that programming," said Hanrahan.

"It is very challenging for the program to be effective when all the pieces don't work."

Probation officers received refresher training for completing risk assessments this year, according to the report.

The report found the department doesn't have an established process for transitioning offenders from custody to community terms, like probation. The department was also in violation of its own quality assurance policy.

"Poor case management practices may compromise public safety," notes the report.

Additionally, quality assurance for risk assessments and case management were "non-existent" during the audit period, and classification officers had minimal training. The report recommends the Justice Department provide updated training for classification and parole officers; in its response, the department said it would create a formal training program.

The report statesthe department did not formally plan for the release of offenders in custody, and did not provide adequate rehabilitation for individuals once they were out of custody.

Conway Ottenheimer called the report's findings "scathing."

"What itsays, sadly, is that rehabilitation is not a priority for this government," she said.

NDP justice critic Lela Evans agreed.

"There's a moral obligation to help people, right? And right now there's no supports there."

Since the audit concluded in 2019, Hogan said, the provincial government has been working to improve the adult custody process. He pointed to programs like electronic monitoring and bail supervision, both of which he said are meant to allow offenders to spend less time in prison, as well as mental health supports.

"I would suggest if the auditor general would review between 2020 and 2022, she's going to find improvements," he said.

No formal guidance, old legislation

The procedures for documenting information about offenders in custody are also unclear, according to the report.

"There is no formal guidance on documentation requirements, such as what information to include, how it should be structured, or how it should be entered so it is easily retrievable," the report states.

The documentation issue extendedto offenders who were on parole. According to the auditor general, there is no policy dictating how probation officers document an offender's lack of compliance with court orders.

"We found examples of probation officers indicating that an offender was compliant with court orders, when the contact notes had evidence of non-compliance," reads the report.

According to the report, the Department of Justice and Public Safety is relying on legislation from the 1970s to govern adult corrections, even though updated legislation was passed in 2011. According to the report, as recently as 2019, then Justice Minister Andrew Parsons said the department was finalizing the regulations, but as of December, the new legislation still hasn't been enacted.

"We could not determine any reason for these delays," reads the report.

Hogan said the legislation will come into effect in 2023.

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