There are more federal parolees per capita living in Victoria than any other city in Canada, and New Westminster is a close second, according to internal government data obtained exclusively by The Vancouver Sun.
Indeed, the data reveals there are so many ex-cons living in Victoria and New Westminster that their share of parolees is more than six times the national average.
Chilliwack and Prince George are also among the top 10 cities nationally for parolees, both with more than three times the national rate.
Victoria has 146 parolees and a population of just under 80,000, giving it a per capita rate of 187 parolees per 100,000 residents.
New Westminster’s per capita rate is 167, Chilliwack’s is 94 and Prince George’s is 79.
The national average is just 25.
Following Victoria and New Westminster, the cities nationwide with the greatest share of parolees are Moncton, N.B. (155), Kingston, Ont. (127) and Prince Albert, Sask. (108).
An interactive graphic showing the rate of parolees for 143 cities across Canada is online at vancouversun.com/parole.
There are roughly 8,500 former federal inmates in Canada on day parole, full parole or statutory release.
Addresses reported
While some are required to live in a halfway house, most are free to live on their own, anywhere from a rented apartment to a relative’s basement.
All parolees have to report their current address to their parole officer, who then records it in the government’s Offender Management System.
Parolees must continue to report their address until the end of their sentence.
Those sentenced to life in prison, such as murderers, must check in with a parole officer until they die.
Through the Access to Information Act, The Sun obtained from the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) a list of how many parolees lived in each Canadian city as of October 2010.
The Sun then compared those figures to each city’s population in the 2006 census, coming up with a rate of parolees per 100,000 residents for each city.
It’s impossible to know for sure, based on the data provided, whether some parolees may be mistakenly listed as living in Victoria even though theyreside in nearby Esquimalt or Oak Bay, which could inflate Victoria’s per-capita rate.
However, the data provided to The Sun suggests that, if anything, parole officers are inclined to record the specific neighbourhood where a parolee lives instead of the larger city. For example, the data provided listed a number of parolees living in Etobicoke and North York, even though both are part of Toronto.
Why some cities have so many more parolees than others isn’t entirely clear, but it appears linked to the number of halfway houses and parole offices in a city.
Sara Parkes, a spokeswoman for CSC, noted in an interview that those cities with the most parolees also tend to be those with halfway houses and parole offices.
“There’s a definite parallel,� she said.
For example, Victoria has three halfway houses, the same number as Surrey, even though its population is one-fifth the size.
New Westminster, a city with fewer than 60,000 residents, has two halfway houses.
Both cities also have parole offices.
Prince George has six halfway houses and the only parole office in northern B.C.
And Chilliwack has a parole office and a community correctional centre, a government-run facility that houses offenders on day parole.
Inmates can apply for day parole six months before they become eligible for full parole.
On day parole, offenders are required to come back to a designated facility, such as a halfway house, each night.
Once an offender graduates to full parole, they are more or less free to live where they wish.
But Tim Veresh, head of the John Howard Society of B.C., which runs several halfway houses, said the location of such facilities can have a big impact on where parolees live even after they’re no longer required to reside at one.
That’s because most parolees spend their first few months of freedom in a halfway house, and those months are crucial to building their post-prison life.
“They go to school, they get a part-time job, they end up with a full-time job,� said Veresh — in short, they start making the kinds of community ties experts say are essential to an offender’s successful re-integration into society.
As a result, when it comes time to leave the halfway house and find their own accommodation, many parolees decide to stay in the same city.
“They’re pretty much laying roots. And that’s what we want them to do,� said Veresh. “It would make sense that they would probably stay.�
Not all of the cities with high parolee rates have halfway houses, though.
Abbotsford, which has no halfway houses, has 43 parolees per 100,000 residents, well above the national average.
Veresh suspects that’s due to the fact Abbotsford is essentially surrounded by federal prisons.
You’d think the last thing a prisoner would want to do after being released is to live within a stone’s throw of where they served time.
But, Veresh said, family members of inmates often move to a community close to the prison so that it’s easier for them to visit.
“The family lays down roots, the kids are going to school there,� he said, which makes it a natural place for a prisoner to settle once they get out.
Federal prisons incarcerate any offender sentenced to two years or more.
As a result, federal parolees are generally some of the most hardened and violent criminals.
Statistics compiled by the Parole Board of Canada indicate that roughly 20 per cent of federal parolees served time for murder, while 10 per cent were incarcerated for sex crimes.
Another 30 per cent were in prison for a violent offence other than murder or sex crimes.
The remaining 40 per cent were convicted of non-violent drug offences or property crimes.
Few crimes by parolees
Despite those statistics, the number of people who commit a serious crime while on parole is in fact quite low.
Statistics collected by the Correctional Service indicate that about 60 per cent of those on statutory release — available to offenders after they serve two-thirds of their sentence — successfully complete their release.
The remaining 40 per cent have their parole revoked before the end of their sentence. But the vast majority of those revocations are for violating conditions, such as failing a drug test.
About eight per cent are charged with a non-violent crime and only two per cent commit a violent crime before the end of their sentence.
For those on day parole or full parole, the incidence of violent crime is even lower — about one per cent. For that reason, said Veresh, he thinks communities with high rates of parolees have little reason to worry.
“I’ve seen more assaults and things like that in bars than in and around halfway houses,� he said. “If you look at the crime stats coming out of halfway houses, they’re very, very low.�
David Toner, spokesman for the victims’-rights group Families Against Crime Trauma, said while many parolees are law-abiding, cities with high rates of parolees should worry about what types of offenders are in their midst.
“If they’re releasing murderers and pedophiles and rapists into a community where we’re living as citizens, I’d be really worried about that,� said Toner, whose stepson Matthew Martins was beaten to death in 2005.
Toner said he thinks the government should be required to notify the public whenever a violent or sex offender is released into their neighbourhood, providing a photo and name of the released prisoner.
“The public has a right to know,� said Toner.
“Their rights to privacy should be superseded by our right to safety.�
Veresh said police are already notified whenever someone is released from prison.
And they have the power, if they believe that person poses a danger to the community, to alert the public — something they have done in rare cases.
However, Veresh argued, notifying residents about each and every violent and sexual offender released from prison could be counter-productive.
“When the public’s made aware, the individual is [often] chased from community to community,â€� he said. “The individual [may then] go underground … which elevates the risk and puts the public at greater harm.â€�
Statistics may mislead
The Sun compared the rate of parolees to the rates of property crime and violent crime for the 20 B.C. cities for which data was provided.
That comparison did show a correlation between the two: generally speaking, the more parolees you have in your city, the higher your crime rate is.
But it’s not clear that parolees are causing the higher crime rates.
Veresh said it may be that the same kinds of communities that develop high crime rates also attract the kinds of social services and low-rent apartments that are attractive to parolees.
And, Parkes noted, many offenders simply return to the city where they were arrested, meaning that high crime rates may be causing high parolee rates, not the other way around.
In determining which cities had the most parolees per capita, The Sun limited its analysis to those communities with at least 25,000 residents.
That excluded Sainte-Angèle-de-Prémont, Que., a community of around 700 people that, because it has one halfway house with nine residents, technically has the highest parolee rate in Canada: 1,357 per 100,000 residents, or 50 times the national average.
Similarly, tiny Lantzville, B.C., population 3,600, has a single halfway house and eight parolees, giving it a rate of 219 per 100,000, higher than Victoria.
Of the municipalities included in the data released to The Sun, the Canadian city with the lowest rate of parolees is Markham, Ont., with just 4 parolees per 100,000 residents. In B.C., Delta had the lowest rate (6), followed by Richmond (10), Coquitlam (13), Burnaby (16) and North Vancouver (16).
The Correctional Service only provided The Sun with data for cities with at least five parolees, arguing that listing communities with fewer than that could violate the privacy of individual offenders.
For that reason, it’s impossible to know how many parolees live in cities not included in the data — such as West Vancouver and Port Moody — other than it’s fewer than five.
Not taking into account population, the Canadian city with the most parolees is Montreal, at 862, followed by Toronto (548), Edmonton (436), Calgary (358), Winnipeg (266) and Vancouver (245).
cskelton@vancouversun.com