We could walk past the Saint-Laurent halfway house dozens of times without noticing it. The apartment building blends in with the others that line the streets of Montreal North.
To enter, you must wave to the receptionist, who must unlock the door. It is that the comings and goings of all residents are highly monitored, 24 hours a day.
Indeed, the Saint-Laurent house accommodates up to 30 inmates released from provincial prisons – who have therefore received less than two years and are serving the rest of their sentence in the community.
Simon (we use a fictitious first name to protect his privacy) is one of them.
The man in his 50s is completing his third stint in the prison system, which lasted two years less a day. In his previous life, he stole cars. “It wasn’t small business, it was $250,000, $300,000 Winnebago,” he explains.
After a rock and roll childhood in a multitude of foster families, Simon found himself living with his grandparents, where he learned to fly to satisfy his grandfather. He first set foot in prison when he was 18. Years later, drug addiction led him to commit more thefts to pay off his consumer debts.
He has been sober since 2018. He now has a job in a garage and he rents his own apartment. The people in charge of the halfway house allow him to sleep there several times a week, but he has to contact them many times a day to confirm that he is indeed at home.
He attributes his successes to the staff of the Saint-Laurent house, in particular to his worker, Lorena: “If you want it, they will help you change your path and take your life in hand. That’s what they did for me,” says Simon.
But life isn’t easy either. Residents must spend their days preparing for the end of their sentence, following a plan they prepared while behind bars. It could be looking for a job or an apartment, taking vocational training or attending workshops on subjects such as substance abuse or anger management. You also have to renew your driver’s license, open a file at the CLSC if you don’t have a family doctor, and update all the government paperwork.
If they refuse to take these steps, the residents are at high risk of being sent back to detention.
In the evening, they have to be back before curfew and sometimes share a small room with two other people.
“You have to call me whenever you go. You have to keep each of your bills. I talk to your loved ones, I meet them, I go to your house, I want to know who you are with, what you do, why, how. I put my nose everywhere in your life,” adds Tania Patry-Gagnon, experienced worker at home. As part of her job, she helps residents, but she must also, if necessary, inform their probation officer of non-compliance with conditions imposed on them on a case-by-case basis — for example, having consumed alcohol, having been too far from the halfway house or having come into contact with people who also have a criminal record.
The clinical coordinator of the Saint-Laurent house, Karine Roby, emphasizes that public safety is a constant consideration: “We analyze the risk factors, the contributing factors. […] Nor do we take lightly the idea that we have their freedom in our hands. […] It’s fraught with consequences, everything we’re doing here. »
The challenge of social reintegration
But the game is worth the candle, think people who work in this field, if it can reduce crime.
The Quebec Conditional Liberation Commission, which decides who has the right to go out earlier, indicates in its 2021-2022 annual report that “the recidivism rate is 2.6%” at the provincial level. In addition, 79.1% of those released complete their sentence without reoffending or breaching their conditions.
On parole, “the person, when he leaves, he is supported, helped and supervised,” argues Marion Vacheret, professor of criminology at the University of Montreal. Keeping detainees as long as possible behind bars would be more dangerous, according to her, because “confinement isolates socially, often you lose your family ties, your social ties, it makes you lose all your bearings in terms of employability, in terms of housing “. And if a person only comes out at the end of their sentence, “she has nothing left, she will find herself homeless, she will find herself in precarious situations, so we put society at risk and this person, precisely, finds herself resting criminal acts, “she argues.
The first two times that Simon was released from detention, he had not stayed in a halfway house. “You go out, you’re used to this life [criminelle]but you have fuck all. So what are you doing? If you don’t have support [comme dans la maison Saint-Laurent], What are you doing ? You do what you know,” he says.
But even with good support, rebuilding your life isn’t always easy.
“A guy who is going to knock on five, six, seven, eight, twenty doors before finding a job at minimum wage, he may be a lot more discouraged than Mr. or Mrs. Everybody who is going to carry four resumes and who has two interviews the following week, recalls Ms.me Patry Gagnon. So, of course, society must make room for them if we want them to be able to rehabilitate themselves. »
Simon, on the other hand, was very anxious about meeting potential bosses to whom he had to reveal his past, since his usual strategy was “to tell lies to everyone and put on a nice facade”. Fortunately, luck smiled on him, and the second employer he met took him under his wing.
“He said to me, ‘I’m glad you were honest with me. […] If you want to spend the rest of your life here, you’ll spend the rest of your life here, we’ll help you,” recalls Simon with emotion. “A month later, they gave me the keys to the garage. […] They put it in my hands and they said to me: “We trust you”. When you realize how lucky you are, you can’t betray that. »
Simon will be supervised by the transition house for another three months. “If you ask me what I think for the future, it’s sure to continue in the same direction,” he concludes.