Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to follow up on my statement from yesterday where I was speaking about the abysmal statistics in the Northwest Territories when it comes to family violence.
Having the highest crime rate in the country and the second highest rate of violent crimes in the nation is not a statistic we should have and it should be an embarrassment for this government. Spousal assault is up 107 percent in four years and there’s a 43 percent increase for sentences in violent crimes in just seven years.
In my opinion, what we can do immediately is to review our programs and rehabilitation services provided for violent offenders incarcerated in our corrections system. We must target the only people who can stop the violence and the abuse, and that’s the offender.
I was recently back on the government website and, again, I would like to note that our largest correctional centre, North Slave Correctional, does not have a resident clinical psychologist on staff. I’ve been asking questions and raising this issue for well over two years and still today there is no clinical psychologist on staff. If the NWT does not have the highest repeat violent offender percentage in Canada it would surprise me.
We have to start the review immediately and both Health and Social Services and Justice should be involved in how the review is structured, and we should find where the best programs for treating violent criminals exists and bring it into our corrections facilities as soon as possible. We need to treat violent offenders. They must have available to them every opportunity for rehabilitation so they don’t reoffend, so that our families are safer, so that our communities are safer. If we do anything less, we are short-changing public safety here in the Northwest Territories.
In addition to this concern, I’m also very alarmed at the trend I see in our justice system where previous offenders of violent crime seem to have all these previous convictions summarily cast aside. Whether it’s 15, 16, or even 18 previous convictions per violent offence, the punishment, it would seem, does not fit the crime.
How can a multiple repeat violent offender kill someone in the Northwest Territories and get five years? How can a husband beat his wife to death and get five years? How long are we going to continue to coddle violent criminals in our Territory? Can this Minister and this government have any impact on sentences of violent offenders?
I seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement.
---Unanimous consent granted
What message does this send to the victims -- these light sentences -- and to their families? Certainly we know the message that light sentences have on offenders, especially if they’re not thoroughly rehabilitated. They will get out and, sadly, most of them will reoffend. We have to do everything in our power to turn that trend around.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. The honourable Member for Nunakput, Mr. Jacobson.
