VANCOUVER – The Province is making changes to help keep British Columbians safe, launching a new Safer Communities Action Plan with immediate steps that will strengthen enforcement to keep those who commit repeat violent offences off our streets, and strengthen services to build safe, healthy communities for everyone.
The Safer Communities Action Plan lays out concrete steps at the provincial level to make communities safer under two tracks: enforcement, and intervention services. Each initiative is structured to improve co-ordination between law enforcement, community service organizations, justice system actors, health providers and people who are recovering from addiction and mental-health challenges in a collaborative, co-ordinated approach to address the issues people are seeing in their communities.
The new measures respond to a rise in repeat violent offending linked to unintended impacts of federal law changes and subsequent Supreme Court decisions, and increased mental-health and addiction challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic and the toxic drug crisis.
The LePard-Butler investigation into repeat offending and violent stranger attacks’ 28 recommendations were released on Sept. 21, 2022, and the full report was made public on Oct. 1, 2022. The recommendations cover several areas, including improving the system of care for people in the criminal justice system with mental-health and substance-use challenges.
New measures announced include:
* launching new repeat violent offender co-ordinated response teams, made up of police, and dedicated prosecutors and probation officers;
* expanding mental-health crisis response teams into more communities so police can focus on crime, and people in crisis are met early on by health-care workers and community members;
* taking the next steps in creating a new model of addictions care at St. Paul’s Hospital so people can seamlessly move from crisis response in the emergency room, to detox, to treatment services, in partnership with Vancouver Coastal Health and Providence Health Care, with plans to expand this model in the future;
* opening 10 new Indigenous Justice Centres to provide culturally appropriate support for Indigenous Peoples involved in the justice system to address the root causes of their involvement in the system and help them break the cycle;
* going after the houses, cars and luxury goods of high-level organized criminals who profit on misery by introducing “unexplained wealth order” legislation in spring 2023; and
* building public confidence in the prosecution system with new direction from the attorney general to prosecutors to implement a clear and understandable approach to bail for repeat violent offenders within the existing federal law. The new policy will take effect on Nov. 22, 2022.
The plan includes other co-ordination measures, such as better support for people with acquired brain injuries through overdose or other injury – with a focus on those involved in the criminal justice system – through increased funding for the Brain Injury Alliance, more integrated information sharing between justice and community partners to strengthen case management and expanding the use of technology to guide police in gathering, and sharing information with doctors and nurses during mental-health crisis situations.
These actions align with recommendations from a number of reports on community safety, including the Special Committee on Reforming the Police Act, the First Nations Justice Strategy and the Investigation into Repeat Offending and Random Stranger Violence.
