Over the past several years, the Correctional Service of Canada has been implementing significant changes to the way it does business see CSC, Currently, the Conservative government is gearing up to push its Omnibus Crime Bill through the House of Commons, which will result in sweeping changes to how crime and justice are managed in Canada.
During a check-in with a former intern and colleague back in Canada, she informed me that on May 26, the last community-based sexual offender group session was held at the Keele Centre, a halfway house in Toronto. Most institutionally-based sexual offender treatment programs have already been terminated and staff—including some of international renown—have been reassigned to other duties. On the surface, these may seem like simple bureaucratic decisions—the sorts of things that many governments might do as they attempt to retool their services.
However, I think it is really important that we put this in some context. Celia Ruygrok was a Carlton University student working alone on an overnight shift at an Ottawa halfway house when she was murdered in July by a resident of that same halfway house. Tema Conter was murdered in Toronto in January by a convicted murderer and sexual offender who had spent most of his adolescent and adult life in jail. He was living in a downtown Toronto halfway house that was subsequently closed and never reopened.
In June , 11 year old Christopher Stephenson was abducted from a Brampton shopping mall, sexually assaulted, and murdered, again, by a known sexual offender living in a halfway house that, to my knowledge, never again accepted sexual offenders as residents. These tragedies resulted in changes to the operation of community residential facilities across Canada, including the development of detailed Operating Standards for the Correctional Service of Canada CSC.
Indeed, the deaths of Celia, Tema, and Christopher galvanized the people of Ontario and, arguably, the people of the entire nation against what they saw as haphazard policies in managing the risk posed by sexual offenders conditionally released to the community.
