Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In follow-up to my Member’s statement today, and actually I just want to make a little reference to the Minister of Justice, the Minister that’s responsible for the Anti-Poverty Strategy. He mentions every one of the Ministers on Cabinet and what they’re doing to help address the Anti-Poverty Strategy. That is great because, really, we all have a part to play in this very serious issue when it comes to the high rates of our Aboriginal people in the corrections and jail systems. I do believe that this government is taking a very proactive step, and taking the right steps moving forward here over the last 16 months that we’ve been working together.
First of all, I have my first question for the Minister of Justice. When an individual becomes incarcerated and he goes to a correction facility, what types of treatment programs, mental health and addiction treatment programs, do the inmates have access to in all of our corrections that we have in the Northwest Territories? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Moses. The honourable Minister of Justice, Mr. Abernethy.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As every inmate comes into the facility, whether they are Aboriginal or not, they have their own case manager who will help develop a tailored plan to specifically meet their needs and identify what programs are appropriate based on their sentence and direction given by the courts. We do have psychologists on staff. We do have drug and alcohol programs and we have access to AA and other programs that are available that would suit the specific needs of individual inmates. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you. All these very great programs that are allowed into the jail systems, we almost have better services in the jails than we do in our communities, which is very unfortunate.
With these treatment programs, are they mandatory to take these programs or are they on a voluntary basis for the inmates? Thank you
Interesting question. It depends in some cases on the sentence that’s been passed down by the judge whether an inmate takes a specific program or not. But regardless, we have a large number of programs that are available to individuals as they so choose. Our case managers will work with the individual inmates to identify, as I’ve indicated previously, what might be appropriate for that particular inmate. We have a significant number of programs. I mentioned a few earlier, but within our facilities we also facilitate visits with elders and elders programming, traditional arts and crafts, pre-treatment healing programs, Dene laws, land programming, sharing in healing circles, sweat lodges, smudges, the Healing Drum Society does a number of things for us, we have alcohol counselling, Narcotics and Alcoholics Anonymous, we have reintegration programs that we deal with individuals on as they go through into probation or release into communities. So there’s a large number of things. Some of it’s directed, some of it’s up to the inmates and we work with our case managers to direct them. Thank you.
Thank you. I want to ask the Minister, does he see trends in terms of high incarcerations during the season or over the year. Is there any specific time where we see a higher increase of individuals being incarcerated in our northern jails any time of the year? Thank you.
Thank you. Anecdotally, I’ve heard that there is, and in my previous career that’s been suggested. It was usually suggested that we’d see higher incarceration numbers over the winter months, but we’re not actually finding that to be the case. We are at some of our lowest incarceration rates in our correctional facilities than we’ve been at in years. Over Christmas we were down to 121 adults where our capacity is 248. We’re less than half. Today we’re at 177 adults in our facilities with a capacity of 248. So right now we are at some of the lowest numbers we’ve seen in many, many years. So those anecdotal trends do not seem to be playing out as they have in the past. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Moses.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. With a lot of the crimes that we see in the Northwest Territories related to alcohol and drug offenses, would the Minister be looking at possibly developing a policy for our correctional facilities, that anyone that goes in on an alcohol or drug-related offense, that they have to take mandatory alcohol and drug treatment programs during their incarceration to help them heal and to help them get the rehabilitation that they need? Would he look at creating a policy and is there any policy in any other jurisdictions in the correctional facilities? Thank you.
Thank you. I’ll have the department look to see if there’s any mandatory programming in other jurisdictions, but at the end of the day, making a program mandatory does not mean it will be successful. As individuals are suffering with addictions and other issues, they have to be ready for the healing journey, and if you force them to take it, you’re not going to get positive results. We make the programming available, we have really high calibre, high quality case managers who can work with the inmates when they come into the facilities to help them prepare for a healing journey and make the programming available to them. We’ve got the programming available.
In the last budget round, Members of the Legislative Assembly worked with us to put more money into programming in the Hay River facility. So we’ve got a lot of really good programming. Yes, of course, we can always try to enhance the programming and make it more effective, but I’m not convinced that making it mandatory is going to give us results if the people aren’t ready to utilize the program and if they’re not ready to take the healing journey, forcing them into a program that they’re not interested in being will not prove results. People have to take some personal responsibility. We’re there to help them. We’re there to help them into the programming and get the healing that they need. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. The Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
