Provincial and Federal Government Corrections Agencies
Provincial Corrections
The B.C. Ministry of Justice, Corrections Branch is responsible for corrections services for offenders' sentences of community supervision or less than two years in prison. It has two main areas of responsibility.
- Community Corrections - manages probation offices across B.C. that provide programs to support offenders and supervise court ordered community supervision orders.
- Adult Custody - manages correctional centres, with varying levels of security and control. These centres hold offenders serving sentences of less than two years. They are also used to keep offenders while they await trial, transfer to a federal correctional centre or who are detained for immigration purposes.
Federal Corrections
The Correctional Service of Canada is the federal government corrections agency. The agency:
- manages federal prisons with varying levels of security;
- supervises offenders conditionally released into the community;
- supervises sentences of two or more years in federal prisons; and
- assists offenders to move back into the community after they leave prison.
Public Safety Canada develops legislation and policies for the correctional service.
The Parole Board of Canada is an independent federal agency within Public Safety Canada that decides whether an offender is paroled. The board can:
- give or take away day or full parole;
- order an offender to be kept in prison until the end of their sentence. Offenders who are eligible for statutory release may be detained if they are considered at risk of committing other crimes; or
- decide if an offender should be conditionally released. The board decides on conditional releases for all provinces and territories except Quebec and Ontario. Those provinces have their own parole boards, which review parole eligibility for offenders serving less than two years in prison.
