Lobbying efforts and pressure on Crown Counsel appear to have paid off for the City of Williams Lake.
Chief administrative officer Milo MacDonald announced at Tuesday’s regular council meeting that they are on the cusp of having 6 offenders on electronic monitoring.
Councillor Scott Nelson said he believes that the community pressure is what’s changing the balance of this and that it’s a positive step in the right direction to help fight crime in our community.
“A number of them are prolific offenders but we’ve really gone from zero to six in a very short period and it’s good news,” Nelson said. “I think the winner of the day is the community at large.”
MacDonald told MyCaribooNow there has been a lot of advocacy on the part of Council to try and encourage Crown Counsel to consider electronic monitoring where appropriate.
“It’s a good news story for everybody,” he said. “First of all I think Crown should be commended because they were very receptive to the public input on that issue and they have made some obvious strides to increase the number of people that are on electronic monitoring, but I think the benefit of electronic monitoring is that it allows people to remain in the community, it allows people to be with their families, to go to school, to attend a job and to not lose their employment. So there are benefits to the offender for electronic monitoring and of course, there are benefits to society.”
MacDonald said the City will continue to advocate that the electronic monitoring program continues to be applied where appropriate.
“I was having a conversation yesterday and we felt that it’s very realistic that there could be as many as maybe 20 people on the program at some point in the future. That would be a realistic number for our community .”
(Listen to the author of this report with City of Williams Lake CAO Milo MacDonald in the audio file below)