By Jeff Labine

Province’s report on crime reduction in progress

Jan 27, 2017 | 4:00 PM

Prince Albert’s mayor is welcoming the chance to voice concerns he has with crime to a provincial caucus committee.

Sask. Party MLA for the Battlefords Herb Cox who also chairs the caucus committee on crime reduction, held a meeting in Prince Albert on Thursday to gather local and regional information on crime. Once collected, the goal is to analyze the information and determine solutions to reduce crime.

Mayor Greg Dionne was able to attend the meeting and called it “very positive”. He said the participants at the meeting were receptive and listened to his concerns.

“My problem was how many times are you going to release prisoners on an undertaking that they keep breaking and we keep arresting,” he said. “The system they are doing is not working and they have to be kept in custody.”

Dionne gave the example of how individuals responsible for a series of break and enters were released on a promise to appear in court and a few weeks later were arrested again for breaking into people’s homes.

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He said he hopes real change comes about from the meetings.

“Our voice was heard and it is on the table,” he said. “If things don’t improve, we’ll go at it again. I do believe the committee will recommend change.”

Along with Dionne, those who attended the meeting at the Travelodge hotel included representatives from the school division, the city and rural municipalities.

Cox, who wouldn’t go into more details about the information he was hearing, is planning to visit a total of 10 municipalities. He said he doesn’t want to reveal too much because he doesn’t want to influence what other municipalities have to say.

“We went into this committee with no preconceived notions on what the problems were or what the solutions were,” he said. “Once we hear from all the presentations that we have asked for as well as some written submissions that we’re getting, we’re going to sit down [and] form a report from there.”

While there are differences between rural and urban municipalities in terms of crime issues, Cox did reveal the committee is starting to see some common themes around drugs.

“It is either people committing crimes when they are under the influence of drugs and making bad decisions or they are out getting property that they can sell to support their drug habits,” he said. “That’s kind of a common theme that I would say we are finding.”

Cox added the committee has heard a lot about gang activity in cities.

Last November, Premier Brad Wall tasked the committee with finding solutions the province’s crime problems. Cox said the committee is taking a broad approach as they collect information and solutions and mentioned there’s overlap in regards to health and social services issues.

His next stop is scheduled to be in Swift Current with two more after that. The report by the committee is expected near the end of February.

He added the cost to cover the hotels and meals is coming out of constituency budgets as well as some money from the caucus.

Jeff Labine is paNOW’s health and education reporter. He can be reached at Jeff.Labine@jpbg.ca or tweet him @labinereporter.