Legal practice and the federal correctional system

My name is Laura Penney and I work as counsel with the Departmental Legal Services Unit for the Correctional Service of Canada.

The Correctional Service of Canada is responsible for the custody of any offender who’s sentenced to two years or more. I provide a lot of legal advice to wardens and to different members of the client when they have operational issues that arise.

It was through law school that I started to develop an interest in criminal law. I went to law school on the east coast, Dalhousie, then came back to Ottawa. My first job as counsel was with the Correctional Service of Canada.

I like to think of myself as sort of like an in-house counsel for the department. Every government department has their own little group of specialized lawyers that really focus in on the areas of law that matter for that department. So, for the Correctional Service of Canada, we focus a lot on labour issues because there’s a big labour force. There’s a lot of litigation support with habeus corpus applications, charter challenges, human rights issues, and tort cases. There’s also a lot of policy development because the enabling legislation is very prescriptive.

When there was legislative changes around that area, I helped them with their drafting of the legislation and then whenever they need legal advice on that area of law, I help them out. We really focus in on those issues and we sort of specialize in those issues.