'Work to be done:' N.W.T. deputy minister responds to corrections report

The Northwest Territories' deputy minister of justice is responding to the auditor general's report on the territory's corrections system, saying that improvements have been made over the past year and that many issues raised were a result of a lack of documentation.

Sylvia Haener spoke with Loren McGinnis, host of CBC North's The Trailbreaker, Friday morning, one day after a review of the report was completed by local MLAs.

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During the review, Auditor General Michael Ferguson highlighted the lack of programming for things such as addictions in the territory's corrections system. 

The report found that inmates serving sentences less than 120 days were not assessed for appropriate treatment, and that only 36 per cent of short-sentence inmates attended any programs.

Haener said that the work around programming is the "most substantial piece... we're still working on," but added that it's difficult to make inroads for issues such as addiction for short term inmates.

"Those are things that can be very difficult for us to tackle effectively and in a rehabilitative way with inmates when the average length of stay that we're seeing is about 157 days," she said.

"So many of the inmates that come to us are there for lesser periods of time, and as you can appreciate, making substantial inroads in such complex areas as addictions can take a lot more than 157 days." 

Haener also said that progress had been made in this area, pointing to the Matrix addictions program in Fort Smith and resources allocated for traditional addictions programming at Hay River's South Mackenzie Correctional Centre.

'If it's not written down... it doesn't exist'

Numerous deficiencies pointed out in the Auditor General's report were related to insufficient documentation, says Haener, including issues regarding inmate segregation.

Guards at some facilities were found to be putting inmates in segregation without the approval of wardens, and daily and weekly reviews to determine whether inmates should remain in segregation were not always conducted.

Haener said that issues surrounding prisoner segregation were being tackled before the audit team arrived, but that "it's an issue of documentation.

"Our directives and our policy aren't as clear as they could be around the different types of segregation," she said.

"We have administrative segregation and disciplinary segregation. And if it's not clear what type of segregation is being used, the assumption can be that it's all disciplinary segregation, which is obviously more serious.

"So that's an example where the documentation needs to be clear, the guidance needs to be there for staff, and we need to have good strong record keeping around it."

Haener also referenced a section of the report which found the North Slave Correctional Facility and the male unit in Fort Smith were not meeting the requirements for regular fire and health inspections and emergency evacuation drills, saying that it was a "major priority" and that the department "immediately acted on that."

However, she again explained that part of the issue was administrative shortcomings.

"We weren't properly documenting what was happening in terms of inspections, and if it's not written down, the auditors can't see it, it doesn't exist," she said.

More work to be done

Significant improvements to the territory's corrections system have been done before and since the auditor general's report was released, according to Haener.

Those include making up for a lack of a separate screening room at the Fort Smith women's facility by partnering with the local hospital; lobbying the government for a new women's facility, which is set to open in 2017; and correcting the lack of documentation by prison staff.

However, she did acknowledge that there is "more work to be done."

"To date, the work and the progress that we've made, which I think is quite significant, has been done using internal resources," she said.

"We have pointed out in our action plan that we need to do more work assessing needs in areas around program delivery, around training and once that work is completed, we'll have a better sense of how we continue to shift resources internally or find other means to meet those needs."