Last week two more prisoners were accidentally released from custody in Manitoba. At least 6 prisoners have been incorrectly released from custody in the province this year alone.
While the NDP government admits that the growing number of people accidentally released from prison is a problem, it refuses to provide information to assure the public that the problem is being corrected. In fact, with the most recent case, which involved an individual charged in a shooting being accidentally released from custody, the public wasn’t even notified promptly that this potentially dangerous individual was back on the street.
The NDP government wants to treat the issue of accidental releases as an administrative problem. It simply wants to write it off as a minor clerical error. But the fact is that there are people with violent criminal histories being released on the streets and the government is doing everything it can to hide the details from the public or to reveal how the problem is being solved.
Certainly one of the reasons that there are more accidental releases happening is because the court and prison system in Manitoba do not have adequate resources. The stress that has been placed on the justice system as a result of poor planning by the NDP government is resulting in more mistakes happening, mistakes that could be prevented.
I have asked the NDP government to ensure that with every accidental release of an inmate that happens in the province of Manitoba that the public is notified about the type of offence the individual freed was in custody for, how the accidental release happened, and what steps are being taken to ensure the same mistake does not happen again.
This information would not only provide the public with information about the degree of risk these accidental releases are causing but also ensure there is some accountability to prevent them from happening again. However, the NDP government has refused to release this information, instead leaving it to the media to leak details of accidental releases.
It is recognized that in any government and in the correction system there are going to be mistakes. What is concerning is that the frequency of these accidental releases is increasing and the NDP seem more focused on withholding information than correcting the problem. That is as concerning as anything. It is one thing to have mistakes happen, it is another thing to not be willing to learn from them.
