It is disturbing to read that 10 prolific offenders in Greater Victoria accounted for 2,893 negative contacts with police in six years, but there is hope that innovative approaches can bring down that number.
The 10 people, who were the subjects of an average of 413 calls to police per year, are not criminal masterminds; many of the calls were for petty crime and many more were not criminal in nature. They were often referrals to social-service agencies, further evidence that police officers are spending far too much of their time acting as social workers.
As happens too often, drug and alcohol abuse, mental illness and homelessness have a lot to do with putting these people into the path of police. Reducing the contacts and freeing up police requires new methods.
Those methods include support workers who monitor the prolific workers and the Victoria Integrated Court, which has shown great success after only three years.
The court, which brings together court staff, police, health workers, probation officers and social workers, started out with 66 clients, who generated 6,496 calls to police. With help and support from the court in building plans for each client, the number of calls relating to those people dropped 58 per cent.
Such success translates not only into freeing police to deal with a lot of other cases, but also to treating the clients as people who need help, rather than just as criminals who need punishment.
By focusing on what Judge Ernie Quantz refers to as 鈥渉arm-reduction in the community,鈥� the court is helping to find solutions to the problems of mental health, addictions and homelessness.
