Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Can the Minister provide to me at a later time the statistics on population of jails in the NWT over the last five years? Can this information include Indigenous male and female, and the ages. Thank you.
Thank you, Member for Monfwi. Minister responsible for Justice.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This is really should be presented as a written question, but I will work on that. Thank you.
Thank you. Well, some of this is going to be written questions tomorrow.
Okay, so the Hay River correctional centre was to transition to the therapeutic community model in the spring of 2021. This is a very positive step in providing rehab programming. Can the Minister explain how the results of this program will be evaluated and what are their plans to expand this to other correctional facilities?
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So I think this really is one of the bright spots in corrections in the territory, what is going on at the South Mackenzie Correctional Centre. I had the opportunity to tour the facility, and the program had really just been in operation for a number of weeks, but I could tell that it was you know, it was going to make a difference, really, in the lives of the people who are there. So, really, the proof will be in the pudding. And, you know, we are the the residents are, you know, part of the program and so there's constant feedback from them about how things are working. It really is a community model and so everyone is involved; everyone is reporting on the progress. And for perhaps for some specifics, I can follow up with the Member about, you know, how we are really tracking progress. But the idea is to ensure we know how to run this program appropriately and then see how it can be expanded. It won't be we won't be able to just transfer it to NSCC. It's a different type of population. There's a number of differences. But I think we're learning valuable lessons there that we want to be able to share with the rest of the territory. Thank you.
Thank you. Okay, thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I am concerned, Mr. Speaker, that if the population of jails has decreased, does that mean that we are seeing people overfill or bottleneck in other parts of the justice system? Can the Minister provide me at a later time the statistics on the number of people people under probation by ethnicity, age, and gender in the NWT over the last five years?
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Again, this should be a written question and so in the future, it would be nice if these were presented in accordance with the rules. But we can work on putting something together. Thank you.
Thank you. Can the Minister describe what kind of traumainformed support services are available to people under probation? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We have been doing a lot of work over the last number of years on ensuring that first of all, beginning with frontline staff, that there has been traumainformed training. So in the past number of years since 2016, 375 Justice frontline workers have received traumainformed approach training, as well as participated in the Living Well Together Program that's required for all GNWT employees. And that includes the probation officers. And I have to say that, you know, some of the probation officers in the territory really have been leading the charge on integrated service delivery long before it was, you know, the "in thing". So many of them are from the communities. You know, we have some positions in the territory where people are brought in but a lot of our probation officers really understand the communities, and they work with the clients in ways that are really above and beyond what they you know, what you would expect them to be doing. So the services available to those on probation really vary depending on what community they're in.
If you're in Yellowknife, you have obviously, you have access to more services than if you are in a small community with very few services. So it's not I can't give you the I can't say that, you know, we have these services available to everyone because everyone's situation is different based on where they are and what their needs are. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Great Slave.
