The Auditor General of Newfoundland and Labrador, Denise Hanrahan, today delivered a performance audit of the Department of Justice and Public Safety’s Corrections and Community Services Division to the House of Assembly. Today’s audit reports on findings and recommendations regarding adult custody and community corrections.
The audit concluded that the department was inadequate in its efforts to appropriately and consistently manage adult offenders in custody and in community arrangements. The department also did not provide adequate rehabilitation programming, with outdated adult custody policies and incomplete risk assessments, for incarcerated offenders and those on probation or conditional sentence order conditions.
The report identified that while modernized legislation was assented in 2011, the department has not ensured that the Act and its regulations have been enacted. As a result, the department continues to operate under Acts from the 1970’s.
The audit also found that probation officers did not always supervise offenders in accordance with established supervision standards, or always properly enforce compliance with probation and conditional sentence order conditions when breaches occurred. These deficiencies may have increased the risk to public safety and diminished offenders’ probability of successful community reintegration.
The full report, as well as an audit overview, can be found by visiting: www.ag.gov.nl.ca.
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“Appropriate rehabilitation and supervision of offenders in custody, and those serving sentences in the community, is a crucial part of public safety. Adult custody and community corrections programs play a fundamental role in this effort. Adult custody rehabilitation programming and reintegration policies were found to be incomplete, inadequate, and outdated; and for the majority of the adult custody criteria we assessed, no policies existed at all. Gaps in legislation, policy, and procedures may create situations where offenders receive inappropriate rehabilitation, which may result in an increased risk to reoffend. Similarly, offenders serving community sentences without adequate supervision are at risk of not complying with their court ordered conditions and possibly repeating the criminal behaviours that brought them into the justice system in the first place.”
Denise Hanrahan
Auditor General of Newfoundland and Labrador
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Media contact
Chrysta Collins
Manager of Communications and Stakeholder Engagement
Office of the Auditor General
709-730-1568
chrystacollins@oag.nl.ca