The B.C. Government and Services Employees’ Union welcomes Auditor General Carol Bellringer’s progress report issued yesterday on her 2011 report Effectiveness of Community Corrections. Bellringer’s original report and the update corroborate the experiences and concerns of our frontline members working in community corrections. 

In the progress report, the auditor general’s team examined six of the original eight recommendations. They concluded Community Corrections Division has only implemented one recommendation since 2011. Three of the 2011 recommendations are not yet fully implemented, and two of the recommendations remain outstanding. Click here to view the original recommendations. 

“When high caseloads and workloads are a clear problem across the system, it is not good enough to simply state you have no way to measure workload,” said BCGEU President Stephanie Smith. “Our union has worked on joint workload measurement systems in the past. We remain committed to working with Community Corrections to address the workload problem in the division. This will improve the deteriorating working conditions of our members, improve the delivery of this important public service, and improve public safety in our communities.”

“The division states it has created a tool to measure average workload, but they do not have a tool to accurately measure individual workload. This needs to be fixed and it can be fixed,” said Doug Kinna, BCGEU vice president, Social, Information and Health – Component 6. “We are also concerned that no action has been taken to measure the effectiveness of contracted and community services.”

“Community Corrections needs to fully implement the auditor general’s original third recommendation made in 2011. That recommendation called for the division to complete a comprehensive assessment to determine if there are gaps between staff capacity and caseloads. There are significant gaps across the community corrections system. It is a mistake to ignore them,” said Smith.  

The BCGEU has recently surveyed Community Corrections employees on a number of factors. A report of our findings will be released in coming weeks. 

Click here to read Progress Audit Report: Effectiveness of B.C. Community Corrections (May 31, 2016)

Click here to read Effectiveness of Community Corrections (December 2011) 
 

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