Stephen Petrick Local News - Tuesday, May 22, 2007 Kingston This Week
Slowly but surely, wheels are being put in motion to get a controversial halfway house moved away from a local elementary school, a Corrections Services Canada spokesperson said. A committee run by CSC and the City of Kingston has selected eight sites where Portsmouth Community Correctional Centre could be relocated. Currently the facility sits on Portsmouth Avenue, around the corner from Polson Park Public School. It’s a very problematic location considering the number of high-risk offenders housed on the site has gone up in recent years and since 2005 51 warrants have been issued to offenders who have walked way from the facility. CSC spokesperson Diane Russon said she can’t reveal the eight locations, but explained that the committee’s currently narrowing the number of sites down and will eventually release a short list and hold public consultation forums to determine which site would work best. “We have to look at the criteria we need, the zoning bylaws for the city and look at the sites’ proximity to schools,” she said “It’s not an easy process.”
The comments came a day after city council passed a motion which called for city officials to begin treating the issue as a “top priority” and have CSC staff come to the next council meeting to talk about the criteria they need for a new site. It was presented by Portsmouth Coun. Mark Gerretsen who said he wanted to speed up the process and remind officials that residents in the district are patiently waiting for results. The halfway house was a major election issue at both the mayoral and councillor level in last fall’s election. Since then, the joint CSC-City of Kingston committee was formed, but no information has been released to the public. Meanwhile, Jennifer Garofalo, a parent of two Polson Park students, gathered a petition with 633 signatures of citizens who want to see some kind of action soon. However, Gerretsen knows the issue won’t be solved easily. At Tuesday’s city council meeting he said, “I’m not opposed to it being in another location in Portsmouth district, but this is the wrong location.” Looking for a solution within his own district might be the best solution, he acknowledged, because residents at any newly-proposed location are going to cry foul and urge their councillor not to support a move.
And unfortunately, moving the centre to the middle of nowhere isn’t a solution either. “We want it to be within city limits, because it’s a release to the community for the offender,” Russon said. “We want the site to be on a public transportation route and it’s got to be close to banks and grocery stores because offenders have to cook their own food and they have to have access to jobs.” Russon said she can’t even guess how soon a new facility might be up and running, saying that a number of factors could affect the timeline. CSC still doesn’t know if it will need to buy an already existing building or build a new one from scratch, so to say the current site will be gone in one, five or 10 years, would be premature. However, she said, “we’re committed to stay at the current site until we have a new location.”
And for those who are worried about the broader issue — why more high-risk offenders, and even those with histories of pedophilia, are being re-released to the community in the first place — the answer, again, is to be patient. “The Minister of Public Safety, Stockwell Day, has issued a review of corrections,” Russon said. “That’s currently underway and that’s one of the things they’ll be looking at.” And any action won’t be a moment too soon for parents like Garofalo. “It’s stressful,” she says, of knowing that pedophiles can see the Polson Park school yard from the centre. “It’s totally wrong.”
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Police on standby in halfway house talks; Force will remain silent ...
Minister Day fulfils pledge to review correctional system at http://www.ps-sp.gc.ca/media/nr/2007/nr20070420-en.asp (report will be provided to the Minister of Public Safety by October 31, 2007. )
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