SOAPBOX by Chris Clarke
After a month of outrage, Elgin Street-area residents are still grappling with the fact that Corrections Canada located its main Eastern Ontario parole office across from Elgin Street Public School.
Fearful parents smoulder with anger over the government’s lack of public consultation when they moved the office to this new location: it hints of sneaking, of hiding something shameful. Yet, the anger resembles knee-jerk reflexes more than justifiable outrage. Curiously, there was nary a blip of public indignation when offenders met their parole officers at the Jack Purcell Community Centre, directly behind Elgin Public School.
Perhaps it’s the visibility of the new parole centre which rankles residents, a reminder that criminals live among law-abiding people. It shouldn’t.
Currently, there are five halfway houses in Centretown, group homes for offenders on conditional release. Parolees slowly reintegrate into society while under constant supervision from nearby parole officers. These halfway houses allow offenders to ease into the free world instead of being dumped at the prison gate with nowhere to go and no prospects in mind.
Officials say the majority of the 200 Centretown parolees meet with parole officers at their residences or work places and no high-risk sex offenders are assigned to the new parole office.
The National Parole Board released a report in 2002 stating 94 per cent of parolees commit no violent crimes while under conditional release, a significant decrease from earlier years.
Words on a page are poor consolation to parents gripped with paroxysms of fear yet parents should consider that there is more likelihood of becoming the victim of a car accident than of a reoffence.
Should Corrections Canada inform the public more when it opens up offices? Certainly. A community should always be informed of what lurks in its midst. And those in charge of offices should say something less frivolous than “we will probably inform the public beforehand.” The community needs certainties not probabilities when its safety and security are at stake.
It seems the post-9/11 winds of distrust and fear have blown into this ward causing some to secretly dream of preemptive strikes as a cure-all. Is Centretown becoming reactionary instead of tackling the roots of crime? Should we just punish and then shun? Some days it seems that the current political climate of retribution and reckoning from a certain neighbouring government has infected what were once calmer heads. The slimmest margin of failure should not be grounds for panic, nor should it overwhelm compassion. It unravels the ethos that the community can help those who’ve broken the arbitrary laws set up to police itself.
The centre is a testament to the forgiving and compassionate nature of Canadian society that Corrections Canada has tried to move beyond retribution of Old Testament severity to something where humans can be salvaged from the brink of perpetual degeneracy.
This is the essence of restorative justice. Slowly and carefully reintegrating parolees into the community is the most effective preventative, if not preemptive, strike we have.