Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to ask the Minister of Justice what the average cost is of housing an inmate at the North Slave Correctional Centre.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The honourable Minister responsible for Justice, Mr. Lafferty.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am trying to find accurate information. I don’t have it at my fingertips right now but I will get back to the Member on that, the actual number that we have to date.
Some time ago I understood the number to be around $90,000 per inmate per year. I’m not too sure how much that has changed. The reason I ask this is I want to ask the Minister about the number of inmates at the North Slave Correctional Centre, the population there.
As I stated, those are the detailed information that I need to get back to the Member on. I don’t have the information with me right now, but I am making a commitment to get back to the Member on those numbers that have been requested.
I want to ask the Minister about the programs that they offer at the North Slave Correctional Centre or any other correctional facility in the Northwest Territories. It seems like we’re having people enter back into the system. Once they come out, they come back to it again. It’s been said in the House here that we seem to be recycling some of the inmates and it seems like we’re not giving enough resources to rehabilitate them properly so that when they get out, they stay out. I want to ask the Minister of the type of dollars that are committed to programs to help the inmates while they’re in the centres.
We do provide, as I stated earlier in the House, the programs that are available to the inmates. The dollar figure depends on the institution that we have across the Northwest Territories. The most important thing is to have rehabilitation programming and to reintegrate the individuals back into the community. I think the important part is the Aftercare Program. We can do what we can within the system, within the institution, but once they leave, there’s another venue they need to access and that’s the Aftercare Program. As I stated, I work closely with the Minister of Health and Social Services on delivering those programs.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Final supplementary, Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Would the Minister look at future planning to implement strong bush camps in the Northwest Territories rather than continuing pouring dollars into a concrete facility that just seems to recycle our people over and over again and nothing is changing? Would the Minister look at implementing some strong bush camps that would possibly help the justice system?
We are very proud of the programs that we have with respect to the on-the-land programs that the Member is referring to. One of the programs is also in the Sahtu region and it has been very, very successful. We want to continue with that. Not only that but within corrections across the Northwest Territories we do have those programs. I agree that we need to strengthen that. We need to build on it. That’s one of our goals, is to rehabilitate those individuals. Obviously, we don’t want to see them back in the system, but it’s out of our control. That’s our goal as the Department of Justice and I will commit to working on that.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. The honourable Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.
