Nunavut parole office gives public an inside glimpse

Nunavut’s parole office held the first open house in its 10-year history on Nov. 23, allowing a rare public glimpse into what the government does for Inuit serving federal sentences.

The Nunavut Area Parole Office is the workplace of Nunavut’s only federal parole officer, Danielle Paris, who monitors four offenders who have returned to Nunavut after completing federal sentences at prisons in Ontario.

By mid-December, Paris’s workload will have doubled to eight clients as more Inuit offenders finish their prison time.

Paris explained that her job begins before each of her “clients” gets out of jail, because she has to arrange for them to have some place to go, preferably in their home communities.

“It’s a long process,” she explained, communicating with the offender’s family and others in the community, establishing a support network ready for the offender to return home.

“If we don’t start the reintegration process right from the start, we know that they will be back here [in the corrections system],” she said. “This is their homeland.”

Once they’re out, Paris also supervises her clients to try and help them avoid getting back into trouble with the law.

“If it’s a breach of a condition it can be dealt with differently than if you are re-arrested for a new offence,” she explained.

Paris coordinates with community corrections officers — the Nunavut Department of Justice’s probation officers — in the communities to monitor her clients there.

Eleven of Nunavut’s communities have at least one CCO. Most are women, and 70 per cent are Inuit.

Nunatsiaq News attempted to speak with Iqaluit community corrections officers working out of the Nunavut Area Parole Office to find out what their job is like, but was told they weren’t authorized to speak to reporters at the open house.

June Blackburn, the Correctional Service Canada director for Ontario and Nunavut, said that Inuit who have gone home to remote communities lack programs to continue their rehabilitation after release.

She said the CSC is working on an Inuit-specific community maintenance program, which when complete could help federal Inuit offenders as well as those convicted of lesser territorial offences.

Jamie Contois, the administrator for aboriginal initiatives in the Ontario region of Correctional Service Canada – which includes Nunavut – went through some of the rehabilitative programs available to Inuit serving federal time.

Most Inuit prisoners take programs in substance abuse, violence prevention and family violence, sometimes available in Inuktitut.

But the pride of the federal corrections system for Inuit is the Tupiq program for Inuit sex offenders delivered at Fenbrook Institution, where most of the Inuit federal offenders serve their time.

Some prisons with Inuit populations hold country food feasts once a month, and videotape exchanges between prisoners and their families at Christmastime, since Inuit in Ontario rarely receive family visits.

Inuit prisoners also receive visits from elders like Peter Irniq, to counsel and teach the Inuit prisoners.

“We’re getting too many Inuit incarcerated in Southern Canada,” Irniq said. “It’s not in our culture to be incarcerated forever. It’s not our way of life.”

Irniq visits seven federal institutions in Ontario, teaching Inuit culture such as drum-making and drum dancing, but also teaching corrections staff about the culture of their Inuit wards.

“I want to make my fellow Inuit incarcerated in Southern Canada Inuit men again,” he explained.

Irniq compared the patience needed to wait out a long sentence with the patience needed to stake out a seal hole for hours at -50 C, something Inuit prisoners can relate to.

Irniq said he encourages Inuit prisoners to remember a good time in their lives, such as hunting or fishing with their father or walking with their mother.

“I wish we had more (elders),” said Contois. “But it’s really hard to find Inuit elders in the South.”