In the five years since the launch of the Regina Police Service’s Serious Violent Offender Response program, there are already plenty of success stories according to a report before the Regina Board of Police Commissioners Tuesday.

“There’s a lot of challenges to working with this group of individuals but I think that we’ve made a lot of good progress,” Dr. Danielle DeSorcy, a clinical psychologist who’s part of SVOR told the board.

The program, launched in 2013, is aimed at helping violent offenders who are out on conditions reintegrate into the community by assisting them in finding stable housing, employment and general support.

Sgt. Darren Finkeldey told the police board general support can mean anything from taking the people they work with out for a Slurpee or walking their dog to attending parole meetings and other simple supports that play a critical role in building trust.

The program has now been around long enough that some offenders are starting to move out of the program.

“For example, we’ve had some people that are no longer in SVOR because they simply do not need our intervention anymore where they’re self-functioning in community, they’re law-abiding,” Sgt. Finkeldey said.

But he admits that doesn’t mean every case is successful.

“On the other extreme, there’s people that are no longer in SVOR simply because they’ve been sentenced for serious crimes,” said Sgt. Finkeldey.

Regina police Chief Evan Bray says this is a collaborative effort and is becoming an important part of managing both offenders and community safety.

"The ability for our police service to not only have a police officer but a clinical psychologist working with someone who's got a mental health background someone who's from probations and corrections to provide that wrap around service,” Chief Bray said. “Sometimes it's the simple things that get overlooked that can cause a person to step outside of what we would want to see in our community.”

Bray says offering those basic supports like finding a place to live is a huge role SVOR and community partners fulfill towards keeping serious offenders on the right side of the law.

“If you want to work on things like lowering the risk to reoffend, you first have to take care of some basic needs like housing, and that can be very, very essential,” Bray said. “Once that housing aspect is taken care of then everything else can fall into place.”

Bray says the successful cases handled by SVOR are a great example of what working with partners in the city can do towards helping community safety.