Other Initiatives > CoSA

Circles of Support and Accountability

Circles of Support and Accountability (CoSA) is a reintegration initiative based on restorative justice principles for federally sentenced, high-risk, high needs sex offenders who have been held to the end of their sentence. Although imprisoning offenders accomplishes the short term objective of ensuring public safety, most are eventually released and come back to communities with little or no support and very little in the way of accountability.

CoSA was developed in Canada in 1994 to fill this void. The goal is to substantially reduce the risk of future victimization of community members by assisting, supporting and holding released sex offenders accountable in their task of integrating with the community and leading responsible and productive lives. Each circle involves participation of carefully screened and trained volunteers who commit to supporting and holding accountable people we call, “Core Members” as they return to community living. The Core members' participation is voluntary. Existing research (Wilson, Cortoni and McWhinnie, 2009; Also see research bibliography below) suggests that sexual recidivism rates for men who participate in CoSA are 80% lower for men who do not participate in CoSA. Significant reductions in all other types of recidivism has also been observed. Today there are 16 CoSA sites across Canada.

CCJC Involvement with CoSA

CCJC’s connection with CoSA began fourteen years ago when the program was two years old. CoSA was mentioned as part of our publication, “Satisfying Justice – Safe Community Options that attempt to repair harm from crime and reduce the use or length of imprisonment”.

More recently, working in collaboration with the Correctional Service of Canada Chaplaincy program and all CoSA Sites in Canada, CCJC coordinated the fourth national gathering of CoSA sites in Calgary in 2008. (The report from this gathering is available in English by following this link here, and in French through this link here).

The Calgary meeting, among other things provided an opportunity for dialogue between all CoSA sites to consider an inter-agency collaboration on a proposal for funding to Public Safety Canada’s National Crime Prevention Centre (NCPC) to conduct a national demonstration of CoSA. Since CoSA is not formally incorporated as a national group, CCJC was chosen as the umbrella organization to manage the resulting Contributions Agreement with the NCPC. After much work by all involved both in preparing the proposal and advocating for its acceptance, the Circles of Support and Accountability National Demonstration Project received a five-year, 7.4 million dollar funding commitment to be distributed between the 15 participating CoSA sites.

The goals of the National Demonstration Project are:

1. To increase CoSA’s capacity aiming at providing service to an additional 50 core members per year;

2. To conduct an independent evaluation of CoSA's effectiveness in reducing sexual recidivism.

As a result of the NCPC funded National Demonstration Project, CoSA Sites will now be able to function at their full capacity with proper funding for the next five years. More importantly, they will be able to use the results of the evaluation to secure sustainable funding once the project is completed and their value is clearly demonstrated. With this new initiative, we expect to add to the existing evidence that community engagement in crime prevention is a valuable investment.

Currently there are more than 120 Core Members participating in CoSA Circles and over 430 Volunteers across Canada.

From October 2009 - March 2009, these volunteers donated 14,193 hours of their time in Circles/with Core Members and 21,260 hours in total (including time spent receiving training and board hours).

Click here to see some pie charts showing Core Member demographics and areas of support.

A partial bibliography of peer-reviewed research about CoSA is available here.