B.C. spending $25M to support repeat violent offender management teams

The B.C. government says it's spending $25 million over the next three years to support coordination between police, prosecutors and probation officers dealing with repeat violent offenders.

The funding will be used to hire a range of workers, from prosecutors to probation officers to correctional supervisors.

Specifically, the funding will be used to hire 21 Crown counsel and 21 other B.C. Prosecution Service staff, nine correctional supervisors, nine probation officers focused on enhanced release planning for violent offenders, and 12 more probation officers based outside of correctional centres to support other teams.

The funding will also be used to hire four full-time B.C. Corrections workers to develop, co-ordinate and evaluate what the province is calling its Repeat Violent Offending Intervention Initiative.

"We are pulling out all the stops to make sure British Columbians feel safe," said B.C. Public Safety Minister and Solicitor General Mike Farnworth in a release Tuesday.

"With the Repeat Violent Offending Intervention Initiative, government agencies will have the resources they need to pool their expertise and work collaboratively to protect communities and help people break the cycle of offending," he said.

The province says hiring for these roles is already underway, and the new imitative is expected to launch across B.C. in April.

Once up and running, the teams will identify cases where intervention or investigation is recommended, and will help provide documentation to prosecutors to make "informed decisions about charge assessments and prosecutions."

The province's announcement comes roughly a week after provincial ministers met in Ottawa to discuss what bail reform may look like across the country.

B.C. Attorney General Niki Sharma says the province is treading carefully to ensure the over-incarceration of Indigenous people and other racialized groups is not made worse by proposed federal changes to the bail system.

Sharma says the proposed changes will ensure repeat offenders are held in custody before their trial unless there is a "good reason" for their release.

But, she says the province needs to be "very watchful" to ensure bail reform doesn't step on the toes of other initiatives, like the BC First Nations Justice Strategy that aims to reduce the number of Indigenous people involved in the criminal justice system.

Sharma says federal Justice Minister David Lametti has agreed to "move quickly" on the reform, and that it could happen as early as this spring.

With files from the Canadian Press.