By Madeline Baker, Times Chronicle
The provincial government has released their commissioned report on the issue of “prolific” repeat offenders in communities across B.C. and thus far, the public reaction has been deeply divided.
This report, which was prompted by a letter from the BC Urban Mayors’ Caucus (BCUMC) and conducted by mental health expert Amanda Butler and former deputy police chief Doug LePard, argues for improved mental health and addictions support at every stage of the criminal justice system and a new approach to detention centres that can administer this increased support.
Report on repeat offenders calls for social change
In response, the B.C. government committed to reinstating the “Prolific Offender Management Model” that was dropped after a four-year pilot that ended in 2012, establishing a new committee to facilitate communication between criminal justice and health and social service organizations, and a pilot project specifically tailored to Indigenous peoples.
Both the B.C. government and the BCUMC have expressed their gratitude for Butler and LePard’s work and voiced support for their findings. Public Safety Minister Mike Farnworth said that their recommendations “build on work that we already have underway and are already helping us identify further next steps we can take quickly to keep communities safe.”
Murray Rankin, Attorney General and minister responsible for housing, concurred that “today’s recommendations will support meaningful, long-lasting change … to break the cycle of offending,” and BCUMC co-chair Lisa Helps said that they were pleased with the response to their call to action and that their concerns were clearly reflected in the resulting report.
However, BC Liberals leader Kevin Falcon said of the report that the NDP government has often commissioned such reports in the past but “nothing really changes” in the long run after the reports are presented.
“We need to compassionately but firmly take those that have severe mental health issues, involuntarily if necessary, off the street into proper 24/7 care with proper psychiatric support,” said Falcon, adding that anything less would be “too little, too timid, and too late” and “failing in their duty” to keep B.C. communities safe.
Business owners throughout B.C. have also said that they feel left out of the report’s research process, with Surrey Board of Trade president Anita Huberman publicly stating that the private sector “is greatly impacted by prolific offenders” and thus should have been included among Butler and LePard’s partners.
“The authors consulted with a variety of stakeholders including police, mayors and city officials, health authorities, Crown Counsel, community agencies, and academics, [but] did not reach out to businesses or organizations that represent the business voice,” said Huberman.
The BC First Nations Justice Council (BCFNJC) also released a scathing rebuke of Butler and LePard’s report for acknowledging the importance of the Indigenous viewpoint in such a document but claiming that “consultation with Indigenous communities requires relationship and trust-building, which takes time and resources that were unavailable as part of this rapid review.”
“Where Indigenous people are caught in the criminal justice system, it is critical to understand the context and realities of the intergenerational trauma caused by racist and colonial governmental policies such as the Indian Act, the Indian Residential School System, and the 60s Scoop, among others,” said the BCFNJC in their statement.
“We know that Indigenous people and people who experience homelessness, poverty, addictions, untreated mental health and cognitive diagnoses and so on, are more likely to be wrongly convicted for several reasons, including false guilty pleas … we cannot continue to target and criminalize the most vulnerable in this province.”
They also released their own set of recommendations, which include abandonment of the potentially harmful term “prolific offender,” an increased focus on underlying systemic issues that perpetuate harmful cycles when conducting harm reduction efforts, and new consultation processes and “race-based, disaggregated data” to be used in future investigations.
