Ministère de la Sécurité publique - A delay caused by a shortage of staff

An inmate serving an 18-month prison sentence complained that a correctional intervention plan had not been developed for him, even though he had already completed over a third of his sentence.

This plan sets forth the inmate’s recidivism risk and criminogenic and noncriminogenic needs. For an inmate to be granted conditional release, the plan must be completed before the deadline and submitted to Commission québécoise des libérations conditionnelles (CQLC).

The complaint concerned:

• the absence of a correctional intervention plan in his file.

The Québec Ombudsman’s investigation revealed that:

• section 12 of the Act respecting the Québec correctional system states that “the correctional services shall, upon being entrusted with the custody and care of a person, make an assessment of the person in a manner compatible with the length of the sentence, the person's status and the nature of the offence;”
• section 19 of the Act states that the correctional intervention plan is necessary for CQLC’s study of the file so it can render informed decisions;
• the delay in completing the inmate’s file was caused by a shortage of staff;
• an additional staff member had been slated to take over this and other tasks for some time. However, the process of hiring this person had still not begun;
• officers from another unit were brought in to speed up the production of correctional intervention plans. However, this was still insufficient.

The Québec Ombudsman asked the detention facility to:

• assess the inmate and produce the correctional intervention plan.

The detention facility agreed to the Ombudsman’s request. The assessment was completed the following week and a parole board hearing was held three weeks later.