Guy Quenneville
Northern News Services
Friday, July 20, 2007
YELLOWKNIFE - The RCMP laid 170 alcohol-related charges from June 25 to July 2 - reaching a peak for the past few months - but the police are not cracking down on chronic drunk offenders, Insp. Roch Fortin said.
While police have identified a half-dozen or so 'prolific offenders' - "individuals that we continuously receive calls for service (about)," Fortin explained - the RCMP is not targeting them for being drunk but for the "strictly criminal aspects of their offences," said Fortin.
"Is there an issue of public intoxication and people doing things in the downtown core in certain areas? Yes, there is. However, we're not charging people for causing a disturbance by being drunk publicly," said Fortin. "The majority of the time, at the time the offence is committed, the person is intoxicated."
Fortin said the primary concern of the RCMP is the offender's well-being.
"Diversion is always the first course of action," he said, referring to the Crime Reduction Strategy, which aims to enlist offenders with substance abuse problems in programs to kick their addictions.
Although many offences occur in the area of 50th Street, shoplifting complaints are also common at Extra Foods on Old Airport Road and at the Co-op, according to Fortin.
"It's huge down there," he said.
Two recent complaints from inmates who didn't find the Department of Justice's deterrence programs helpful were met with surprise from the deputy warden of the North Slave Correctional Centre, Guy Leblanc.
The inmates complained that the programs were staffed by inexperienced people, but Leblanc said North Slave offers counselling from chiefs from small aboriginal communities, an aboriginal mental health worker trained in the North and medical staff who are familiar with the physical impact of substance abuse.
"Once (the inmates) are in the system, we have a full-blown substance abuse program," said Leblanc.
But the effectiveness of the program depends largely on the motivation of the participant, said Leblanc.
Leblanc pointed to one individual who served a year-long sentence for assault. The man took the substance abuse program, counselling with an elder and a seven-week life recovery program through the Salvation Army, followed by a brief period on work release.
"This guy had been sober and clean for about six or seven months. On his release day, we had him scheduled to attend Nats'ejee K'eh, a treatment centre for substance abuse. Two days before he was scheduled to go, he said, 'I changed my mind. I don't want to go. I want to continue working my job.'"
Jail officials talked to the man's boss, who assured them the man's employment would be awaiting him.
"But the guy still didn't go. And within a couple of weeks, he was right back into the booze, and he lost the job," Leblanc recalled. "About three months later, he came back to jail. And so we asked him, 'Why did you not want to go to the treatment centre?' And do you know what his words were? 'I'm just not ready to quit.'
"If the motivation is not there, this is where the program can be the best program in the world, or the worst program in the world and it's not going to have any impact at all."
