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By Dylana Kneeshaw

final investigative report

“The longer you leave it, the more serious it gets”: Councillor urges action from repeat offender report

Oct 3, 2022 | 4:39 PM

KAMLOOPS — On Saturday (Oct. 1), the province released the full investigation report into repeat offending in B.C. This comes after 28 recommendations to address prolific criminal activity and unprovoked violent attacks were brought forward in September.

The report was a collaboration between the BC Urban Mayors’ Caucus and the provincial government — hiring experts to conduct an investigation into ongoing public safety challenges and recommend solutions.

The conclusion of the full report states that significant investments in poverty reduction, housing affordability, and substance use and mental health care “holds the most promise to drive down crime.”

For civic leaders, this isn’t exactly new information.

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“It’s basically just more, ‘We should do this, we should do that,'” says Kamloops councillor Bill Sarai, “but there’s not really… where are these ‘shoulds’ coming from? That’s disappointing.”

Frustration is growing around how long action is taking. One of the report recommendations is to explore creating facilities or units for people with acute and chronic mental health and substance use needs. But Sarai says they’ve already identified sites that could be used for this kind of complex care.

“The expertise, the funding for the nurses and the psychiatrists and the social workers — that’s all on the provincial government to bring to the table,” he says. “And the biggest gap — and I’ve been saying this since I got elected — is Interior Health is never at the table. When we have solutions that could work, they either get in our way or they don’t come to the table. That can’t continue.”

The province states in Monday’s release (Oct. 3) that one of the things is it working on is bringing back the prolific offender management program, which ran from 2008 to 2012.

Sarai feels the program would need to have adjusted services to respond to modern needs.

“If they brought it back, they’d have to have a lot more pieces involved in it,” adds Sarai. “It’s not the same drugs that are on the street anymore, it’s not the same mental health issues. It’s just like any physical wound that you have — the longer you leave it, the more serious it gets.”

The full investigation report is now available on the BC Government’s website.