A pair of associations say the Alberta government is planning to close a program that treats sex offenders in a hospital setting and move the programming to a correctional centre.
According to the Criminal Trial Lawyers Association and Criminal Defence Lawyers Association, the province intends to close the Phoenix sex offender treatment program by March 2017.
The two associations said the closure would be detrimental to public safety, and can’t be justified by any reasonable economic or scientific research.
“We know the results for those who complete the program have generally been little short of phenomenal,” read a media release from the associations.
Health Minister Sarah Hoffman commented on the program Tuesday but did not say if the program is ending. She said it sounds like the program has been successful and Alberta Health Services (AHS) should be given a chance to build on that success if it can.
“I don’t make decisions about specific programs,” Hoffman said Tuesday. “Public safety is a very high priority. I won’t support anything that compromises that.”
AHS issued a statement Tuesday afternoon to say it had no firm deadline for closing the program and rejects the associations’ claim the move would negatively impact public safety.
“This change will in no way be detrimental to public safety,” the statement said. “We would not proceed with any changes if we believed public safety would be at all compromised.”
The Phoenix program, which operates out of the Alberta Hospital in Edmonton, provides jailed sex offenders treatment for a year that starts near the end of their sentence and continues after an offender’s release.
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A study tracked 120 program participants over a three-year period and 3.3 per cent of them re-offended, according to the associations.
One of the individuals who participated in the program was Karl Toft who was labelled Canada’s most notorious sex offender, committing hundreds of sex assaults while working as a guard at a youth training centre in New Brunswick.
Toft credited the Phoenix Program with his re-integration.
The two criminal lawyer associations said an important aspect of the program’s success has been the therapeutic effect of a hospital setting, as opposed to a prison environment “where offenders contend with a hostile and negative environment.”
In 2014, Alberta Health Services said it was working with Corrections and the Solicitor General’s Office to develop a new sex offender treatment program after two reviews by a provincial expert committee and the Institute for Health Economics recommended the program move from Alberta Hospital Edmonton to a correctional facility.
“We have concluded that, based on best international practice, a sex offender program is more appropriately delivered in a correctional facility, and not a hospital,” read an AHS online post.
“There will be no gaps in service,” AHS later added in a statement. “Sexual offenders in the current Phoenix program will complete their course of treatment before the program transitions.”
However, the associations claim the province’s replacement plan for the Phoenix program is at the Calgary Correctional Centre. They said it will provide six hours of treatment per week, which would be drastically less than the 35 hours per week provided by Phoenix.
AHS rejected the associations’ claim its plan was to reduce treatment from 35 hours per week to six.
“I get that it’s money. I get that it’s political,” Chris Hay, Alberta director of the John Howard Society, said. “I get that there’s a lot of reasons why we start and stop programs. But my gut, and just even logic, would kind of dictate to me that probably won’t be successful.”
Retired Edmonton detective Wil Tonowski is a huge proponent of the program.
“It would be an absolute nightmare to shut that program down without replacing it with something else that was equally as effective, and I can’t see reducing those hours that those people put in – from 35 to 40 hours a week or more – down to five or six hours,” Tonowski said.
According to AHS, “up to 18” sex offenders currently receive treatment through the Phoenix program each year.
-With files from Phil Heidenreich, Shallima Maharaj and The Canadian Press.
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