A relative few criminals are behind the bulk of Kelowna’s crime, the city’s top cop reiterated Monday as she gave an update to the city’s new council.
There are currently 250 prolific offenders that are causing problems in the city of approximately 143,000, Supt. Kara Triance said.
“Currently, offenders are being released into our community after repeatedly committing crimes, without adequate treatment plans, housing or accountability or consequences for their actions,” Triance said.
She estimated that 80 per cent of the crime in Kelowna is committed by 20 per cent of repeat or prolific offenders, which she defined as “a small number of people who commit a disproportionately large amount of crime.”
In the area of property crime specifically, Triance said it’s been estimated that 50 to 60 per cent of crime is committed by five to 10 per cent of people who offend.
The driver in many of these cases is drug and mental health issues.
“Being compassionate and concerned about mental health and substance use doesn’t mean we have to accept repeat criminal behaviour,” Triance said.
“A review of Crown (counsel’s) bail policies, specifically the interpretation of not-in-public-interest. federal advocacy and review of existing federal laws, including the implications of (Bill) C-75, integrated mobile community response teams and co-responder teams that are there to provide an alternative response to crisis … we need these four progressions and they are going to assist us with dealing with crime in our communities.”
Kelowna isn’t the only place facing these issues and the British Columbia government announced last week it is launching new repeat violent offender co-ordinated response teams to deal with them.
The teams will consist of police officers, 21 dedicated prosecutors, 21 probation officers, 21 support personnel and nine correctional supervisors.
Responsibilities will include monitoring high-risk repeat offender cases through the criminal justice system, conducting investigations and sharing information to keep repeat violent offenders in custody before trial.
The province describes these collaborative teams as a new and improved version of B.C.’s Prolific Offender Management program.
The former program, which ran from 2008 until 2012, was defunded by a previous BC Liberal government.
To add to this, the province will provide direction to the prosecution system to implement a clear and understandable approach to bail for repeat violent offenders within the existing federal law.
— with files from Darrian Matassa-Fung
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