NWT jail that became therapeutic community is working, advocates say

Joshua says when he first arrived at the South Mackenzie Correctional Centre in November 2023, he was skeptical about its therapeutic community model.

“I questioned everything and I was finding myself trying to change them, trying to change the program … and I wasn’t getting anywhere,” he said.

Yet Joshua recalls telling himself as he later walked out of the Hay River facility: “Wow, here I was so-and-so months ago, saying that I was going to change this place. And actually, the program changed me.”

Joshua, not his real name, spent nearly eight months at the facility in Hay River, which he said had a profound impact on his life. Cabin Radio has agreed to protect his identity.

After being released, Joshua said he began attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, reconnected with his family and is now completing an addiction recovery program in Ontario.

“I was proud to be sober … It felt like I belonged and I felt for the first time that I belonged somewhere in my family,” he said.

“I’m learning about myself, I’m learning more about where I want to be in my life, I’m finding value in my life.

“I’m putting every effort into being in the right place and hearing the right words to succeed.”

‘I started to see a pattern’

The NWT government began piloting the therapeutic community model at Hay River’s jail in late 2021, with the aim of helping to rehabilitate people in custody.

More than two years later, 35 people have gone through the facility and advocates say it’s having a positive impact.

Joshua said he was at the North Slave Correctional Complex in Yellowknife when he told his case manager he wanted to be moved to the Hay River facility to try to turn his life around.

“When I figured out this is like my third or fourth time coming around to incarceration, I started to see a pattern in my life where things weren’t working for me,” he said.

“I talked about doing stuff for my mental and physical and spiritual, emotional well-being, but I hadn’t gotten around to it because I was too busy being an alcoholic.”

Joshua said drinking led to bad decisions and he found himself alone, with no friends and no one to call on him in jail.

He said the program in Hay River was “challenging” but ultimately rewarding.

Through one-on-one and group programming, he worked on his cultural and spiritual self, learned responsibility, met other people with similar experiences, opened his mind to new things and unlearned negative behaviours.

“I found support. I found compassion, love, respect, kindness, humility. I also found peace with the higher power of my choosing. So my journey started to begin and today, I’m glad I took that step towards healing,” he said.

Joshua said “it’s never too late to change” and he recommends the therapeutic community to other people hoping to make positive change in their life.

“I recommend this program for every struggling addict or substance abuser. Even if you don’t drink or do drugs, I believe that the spiritual awakening from these programs is very useful and it gives people a chance to straighten out their life,” he said.

“Although it’s a facility for convicted people, it’s also a place where you’re safe and you could share and be yourself. So yes, I recommend this place 100 percent if you really want to change your life and you’re really willing to admit that you have a problem.”

‘Every day we see success”

Lorraine McDonald, warden of the South Mackenzie Correctional Centre, said the therapeutic community differs from a traditional jail as it is a “highly structured” environment with a lot of support from both staff and other participants.

“They’re really individuals when they come here. Each of the guys have their own needs,” she said. “There’s a lot of support and the residents support each other through their healing journey. So it’s a big difference.”

McDonald said people incarcerated at the Hay River facility are called residents rather than inmates and are referred to by their first names. Each morning begins with a sharing circle followed by programming that includes counselling, behaviour modelling and Indigenous cultural teachings.

The therapeutic community consists of four phases. The first is a pre-treatment healing program, followed by core programming and then preparing residents for re-entry into the community. The final phase is when residents are released, which includes up to six months of assistance finding work, housing and other support with their transition back into the community.

McDonald said the therapeutic community aims to help residents become healthy, empowered, increase their self-worth and connect them to resources to continue their healing journey after they are released.

“Every day we see success. We see these gentlemen become healthy, not only physically but mentally. We see each individual making progress and it’s very positive,” she said.

“I think the impact has been very beneficial to each individual that has come here. You see growth.”

‘The closest thing to a government-run wellness centre’

The facility can accommodate up to 36 male residents and has 35 full-time staff positions, including traditional counsellor liaison officers, a community health nurse and corrections officers.

To be eligible, offenders have to be sentenced to at least 90 days’ imprisonment, meet risk level criteria, and want to participate in the program.

Premier and justice minister RJ Simpson recently described the facility as “the closest thing to a government-run wellness centre” in the NWT.

“It is a healing program and it is unique,” he told the legislature.

“I hear lots of comments in the House about the need to rehabilitate offenders, to give them the tools so that they don’t return to jail, or to a life of crime or to whatever activity landed them in jail. And so we want to see that through, and hopefully build upon the successes that we are seeing in that program.”

Justice experts have said substance use and the criminal justice system have become increasingly intertwined in the North and across Canada.

Other jails in the country are also using the therapeutic community model to try to address the issue.

Losing the ‘inmate mentality’

At the Nanaimo Correctional Centre in British Columbia, Guthrie House – the first abstinence-based therapeutic community in a Canadian corrections centre – began as a pilot in September 2006.

BC Corrections partners with the John Howard Society of Victoria to deliver the program, which offers one-on-one counselling and release planning.

Acting deputy warden Christine Bootsma said residents in the community learn to hold each other accountable in a respectful way and support one another.

“It’s nothing but positive things that they say about it,” she said.

“A lot of them work on themselves while they’re here and start reconnecting with their family and are building those supports for when they get released.”

Bootsma said the dynamic at Guthrie House is different to that in a regular jail, as staff and residents work together toward behavioural change.

“They’re losing that inmate mentality and they’re just shifting their whole way of life. And they’re building those healthy relationships, which is key to their success,” she said.

An initial analysis of Guthrie House, published in 2010, found that significantly fewer residents who were released from custody reoffended than inmates who did not participate in the program.

The analysis also found participants who did go on to commit crimes tended to reoffend in a less severe manner, with fewer violent offences.

Further research on the program is under way.

Jail as a ‘failed sociological experiment’

Paul Sobey is an addiction medicine physician who leads the development and operation of therapeutic living units in Alberta.

Sobey said research indicates the therapeutic community model in corrections centres leads to reduction in substance use and criminal reoffending.

“We know that there is an integral relationship between use of substances and criminality,” he said.

“The number one thing that we see is that there is markedly reduced problematic use of substances.”

Sobey said that’s because residents gain social, human and cultural capital so they’re more likely to reunite with family, be in relationships and be employed once they are released, which means more accountability.

He added that therapeutic living units are more cost-effective than traditional jail as they reduce the likelihood of people returning to jail.

“From my perspective, jail is a failed sociological experiment,” he said, explaining that people with mental health disorders or substance use disorder are more likely to be incarcerated, as are members of marginalized communities.

“What the evidence tells us,” he said, “is if you treat the primary medical disorder, substance use disorder, in a manner that gives people access to social determinants of health … the likelihood that these people will get reincarcerated drops immediately, and the likelihood they get work and pay taxes goes up dramatically.”