ID: ACJ3-A005 01 Apr 2017

by Prof. Helen Brown, Colleen Varcoe, Mrs Melissa Taylor, Kelsey Timler, Sarah Jackman

Advancing Corrections Journal - Edition #3 - Innovative Approaches for Service-delivery to Offenders (ACJ3-A005)

Article 5: Offenders Work 2 Give Back To Indigenous Communities-A Prison And Community (ACJ3-A005)

Authors

Prof. Helen Brown

Associate Professor

Helen Brown conducts health equity oriented research with Indigenous communities; her research spans maternal-infant health, youth and Elder mental health, and community health promotion as it relates to safety and social inclusion. An equity orientation to Indigenous male offender rehabilitation has now expanded the health focused research to include the criminal justice system and its intersection with neocolonial processes and ongoing structural violence for Indigenous people and communities in British Columbia, Canada.

Colleen Varcoe

Mrs Melissa Taylor

Executive Director, Regional Treatment Centre Pacific

Melissa Taylor began her career as a Psychiatric Nurse working in the Regional Psychiatric Hospital for federally incarcerated offenders. She completed her Master of Art in Leadership and Training in 2005. She began to assume a variety of management roles within the Correctional Service of Canada and is now the Area Director for Fraser Valley Community Corrections.

Kelsey Timler

Master's student

Kelsey Timler is a Master’s student at the University of British Columbia in the School of Population and Public Health. She comes to public health from an academic background in anthropology and over a decade of professional cooking experience, which has laid the foundation for her interests in the growing, sharing and preparing of food, food ways, and food sovereignty as social justice. She has nearly five years of research experience focused on the social determinants of health and health and social inequities. Her interest in prison rehabilitation and experiences of incarceration has grown out of her work as a research assistant with Work 2 Give Research, a research project studying the impacts of a prison work project where men build and create furniture, toys, blankets, and other items to be donated to Indigenous communities. Her thesis research focuses on a Canadian prison-based garden where men experiencing incarceration grow food that is donated to food insecure Indigenous communities in central British Columbia, Canada. Throughout all her work Kelsey maintains a passion for social justice and the healing power of food.

Sarah Jackman

Sarah Jackman is the Executive Director of the Punky Lake Wilderness Camp Society, a non-profit organization that provides Restorative Justice and Peacemaking services to First Nations communities in the central BC area through the Tsilhqot’in Restorative Justice Program. The Society also provides life skills and cultural programming to at-risk Aboriginal youth in the Tsilhqot’in area through wilderness camps, sports clinics, and workshops as well as supervising youth and adult probation clients. Sarah has very close ties to the Tsilhqot'in region, and has been Executive Director for PLWCS since August 2012. Sarah sits on the boards of other groups with similar goals and like-minded missions, including a seat on the Board of the Canadian Restorative Justice Consortium as well as acting as President/Board Chair of Big Brothers & Big Sisters of Williams Lake.

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