Summary of the Evaluation of Offender Case Management: Offender Intake Assessment and Institutional Supervision

About Offender Case Management

Offender case management begins at an offender’s sentencing. During offender intake assessment, the Parole Officer (PO) and other Case Management Team members assess the offenders’ level of risk and their needs. The PO writes the offender’s Correctional Plan. Institutional supervision includes monitoring the offender’s progress on their Correctional Plan objectives and assessing their risk. An upcoming evaluation will look at other parts of offender case management: case preparation and pre-release and community supervision.

About the Evaluation

The evaluation examined offender intake assessment and institutional supervision, from April 2016 to March 2020. It looked at the relevance of offender case management and the performance of offender intake assessment and institutional supervision.

Sources of information were document review, Offender Management System data, case file reviews, interviews with 13 management-level CSC employees, and online survey data from 860 front-line staff, 200 managers, and 29 Elders and Indigenous Liaison Officers.

Key Findings

• Case management is aligned with federal law and CSC roles, responsibilities, and priorities.

• Outside agencies did not always provide documents on time during intake.

• Some assessments were often done on time (i.e., family violence risk, education), but not substance assessments and initial Elder Reviews.

• Staff finished most Correctional Plans on time (95%). Several sections had the expected content. The Correctional Plans of Indigenous offenders did not always include Indigenous Social History for some dynamic factors and the offence cycle.

• Staff reported that the needs of some offender populations (e.g., aging and LGBTQ2+) were insufficiently addressed in the Correctional Plan.

• Staff did not always properly label or complete Casework Records. Correctional Plan Updates, Assessments for Decision, and Structured Casework Records were not always done on time and were not always complete.

• Initial security classification and security reclassification decision documents had the assessment tool results, but did not always explain their relevance.

• Survey respondents viewed case conferences as effective.

Recommendations

1. The Assistant Commissioner, Correctional Operations and Programs (ACCOP), should examine the issues with documentation uncovered through the evaluation to ensure that the Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) currently being negotiated with provincial and territorial partners on information collection address the challenges with the timely collection of each of these documents (e.g., Crown Attorney’s comments, victim impact statement, Finger Print Section sheet, pre-sentence report, psychiatric report, and psychological reports).  Additionally, the MOUs should ensure that appropriate performance measures are captured to gather data regarding the timely collection of documents. The performance measurement data should be shared with MOU partners to monitor the timeliness of documentation collection.

2. The ACCOP should identify a mechanism to ensure the accurate use of Casework Record labels (in particular the Admission Interview and the Initial Interview records). Additionally, there should be ongoing monitoring of the accuracy of the labeling, as well as the completeness of the Casework Records.

3. The ACCOP should ensure that the revisions of the report outlines for the Assessment for Decision and the Correctional Plan Update incorporate modifications to address where content was commonly identified as missing (i.e., Assessment for Decision: plan to manage the offender; Correctional Plan Update: discussion of Indigenous Social History for the contributing dynamic factors, responsivity factors, progress in obtaining identification, updated goals and objectives).

4. The Senior Deputy Commissioner (SDC) and the ACCOP should consider ways to facilitate the collection and communication of initial Elder Reviews for timely incorporation into the intake assessment process.

5. The ACCOP should further investigate the challenges in meeting the 21-day timeline for completion of the substance use assessment.

6. The ACCOP should seek ways to ensure that correctional planning integrates different offender considerations (e.g., aging, ethnocultural, gender identify and expression, and sexual orientation) within the Correctional Plan. This could include ensuring that Parole Officers are aware of their responsibility to include relevant information around offender considerations and objectives responsive to the offender’s needs. Consider modifying IT support processes to take these into account.

7. The Assistant Commissioner, Policy, should conduct research regarding how issues related to sexual orientation and gender identity and expression could be integrated into case management and correctional planning.