Ground-Up Reintegration: How St. Leonard’s Society of Canada is Reshaping Community Corrections

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For over 55 years, the St. Leonard’s Society of Canada (SLSC) has championed humane, evidence-based criminal justice policy. Built on the foundation of the community residential facility movement, SLSC continues to prove that safer communities start with dignity, transitional support, and recognizing inherent human worth.

Five years after Canada’s first federal halfway house was established in 1962 (St. Leonard’s House Windsor), organizations directly serving people in the community recognized the need for a national voice to represent their work. Today, SLSC takes a "ground-up" approach—listening to what is being experienced by people who live at and work within member organizations, ensuring those realities shape national policy nearly 60 years later.

Could you introduce the St. Leonard's Society of Canada and share how its mission of promoting humane and evidence-based justice policy has shaped the organisation over more than five decades of work in community corrections?

St. Leonard’s Society of Canada (SLSC) is a membership-based charitable organization. For over 55 years, we have been bringing together a network of individuals and organizations to collectively address the needs of people involved in the criminal justice system. Beginning with supportive housing, we work together to advocate for safer, healthier, and more inclusive communities.

Our purpose to promote humane and informed criminal and social justice policy, practice, and responsible leadership to foster safer communities has been shaped over 5 decades by how we are governed. As a national organization, we were founded 5 years after the first federal halfway house was established in Canada in 1962 (St. Leonard’s House Windsor). The organizations directly serving people in the community recognized the need for a national voice to represent their work, and to this day we still take a very ‘ground-up’ approach to promoting humane and evidence-based policy. We listen to what is being experienced by people who live at and work within our member organizations, and their realities continue to shape how we operate almost 60 years later.

St. Leonard's has been at the forefront of community-based corrections in Canada since the early days of the halfway house movement. How has the role of community residential facilities evolved over that time, and what does effective transitional housing look like today?

The overarching role of community residential facilities (CRFs) has always been to provide a “warm handover” between correctional institutions to life in the community post-incarceration, and I think that is still true today. What’s evolved over time is our understanding of the complexity of how to effectively support the population that is leaving custody. In particular, this means no longer seeing the population as having a singular set of needs that enable them to be successful after custody (i.e., just getting a job and a place to live); and, shifting towards a more person-centred view overall to ensure people have the best chance for integrating to their community.

Oddly enough, effective transitional housing still looks like it did decades ago – many CRFs are contained within century homes located in urban neighbourhoods. Many need to be adapted to support the evolving needs of their residents, including adaptations to be accessible for older populations (e.g., installing elevators, ramps). Over time, gaps in what people can access after CRFs is becoming more limited due to an expanding housing crisis in Canada. In response to this, we’ve seen some really interesting developments in Canadian community corrections with many organizations shifting to become providers of ‘second stage’ or ‘transitional’ housing after residency at a CRF ends; however, for these models to be effective there needs to be greater access to housing that people can transition to once they are ready to move on. As we look to the future of transitional housing, we need to be able to solve for the question of how to ensure there are a range of housing options for people who have been involved with the justice system that address the current barriers that are in place for them – including for those who may not be able to live independently over the long-term.

Reintegration is at the heart of everything St. Leonard's does. What do you believe are the most critical factors in ensuring that individuals leaving custody can rebuild their lives successfully, and where do you see the greatest gaps in how systems currently support this process?

I believe in what the evidence shows us – that the most critical factors are access to housing, education, employment, physical and mental health care, and positive support networks. These factors come down to having the opportunity to be healthy, having meaningful ways to spend time, and for an individual to be connected to their community. The greatest gaps to supporting access to these critical factors are that the systems responsible for them are incredibly fragmented – often from policy through to operations.

St. Leonard's works across a broad spectrum of needs, including mental health, substance use, homelessness, and long-term supervision. How does the organisation approach the complexity of these overlapping challenges, and what does a truly person-centred reintegration model look like in practice?

SLSC’s operations and conduct are guided by the values of accountability, social responsibility, integrity, commitment, and human worth. In the context of advocating for a person-centred reintegration model, I think these values are woven into how we work as well as what we advocate for. In particular, the value of human worth means that we are committed to promoting the inherent worth and potential of all individuals. Its easy to get bogged down in the complexity of overlapping challenges, but what I think our members excel at is remembering that each individual that they support deserves dignity and to feel valued. Starting from that point focuses on the unique individual, and the model can then build a system of support around them that is most likely to help them along their journey after custody.

As part of the ICPA community, what does St. Leonard's Society of Canada bring to the global conversation on community corrections, and what do you believe the international corrections world can learn from Canada's experience in this area?

SLSC is deeply invested in collaboration that will make meaningful change across the corrections sector. We recognize that we are one organization among many in Canada working in this space, and that each step towards achieving our purpose and vision will require a multi-disciplinary and multi-sectoral approach. Each year, we continue to grow through our experiences in providing leadership that is striving for significant changes – especially in housing after custody, and system navigation services for people with life or indeterminate sentences. I hope that the international corrections world can learn from our experiences trying to collaboratively solve for complex problems, and that we can learn from international models as well.