Long waiting lists for federal inmates to receive treatment for their violent behaviour and addictions has meant more and more prisoners are walking out free without getting help for their problems, says the union representing Ontario's prison guards.

Jason Godin, the president of the Ontario Union of Correctional Officers, said he was concerned about the danger of releasing offenders into society virtually every day, knowing that the very behaviours that landed them in trouble have gone untreated.

"We don't want to put these individuals back into society without some kind of treatment," Jason Godin said.

"It is a concern for us because we're also members of the community and we also know what kind of individual is going back into the community, and I hear this every day," he said.

The waiting lists for rehabilitation and anger management programs are lengthy, causing gridlock that forces some inmates to wait months for parole. For others, it means leaving prison without receiving treatment for the problems that got them into trouble in the first place.

Godin wants programs such as drug rehab and anger management to be compulsory for offenders, but with the current state of the system, that seems impossible. Inmates who voluntarily seek help from such programs are already putting a crunch on the system, he said.

Statistics show inmates are more likely to reoffend if they do not receive treatment.

Billy Debrega, who is serving eight years for conspiracy to traffic drugs, said he waited a year before he was able to get one-on-one treatment with a counsellor.

"There's long waiting lists for all programs," Debrega said.

Other inmates such as Louis Prince, who is serving a two-year sentence for drug trafficking, have been advised to withdraw their parole applications. Prince, who is serving in Manitoba's Rockwood Institute, was told that offenders who have not completed their correctional program are not likely to be granted parole.

He finally got into a drug rehab program after missing a chance for parole.

"I was supposed to go up in February, but because they couldn't get me into my program, I waived it," he said. "Then you've got to reapply, which takes another four to five months."

'We are really a fraud'

Graham Stewart, the Executive Director of the John Howard Society of Canada, said valuable time is wasted when inmates have to wait for programs. His organization, which he has run for more than 30 years, helps offenders get their lives back on track.

"The question is whether we just abandon [offenders] and hope for the best, or whether we put them through a gradual supervised program," he said.

And the longer someone spends in prison, the more difficult it becomes for them to reintegrate into society when released.

"If we don't use every minute that we've got in corrections to actually change the potential for criminal activity, then we are really a fraud," Stewart said.

The federal Auditor General, Correctional Services Canada and the Correctional Investigator have acknowledged the system needs to be fixed. But when the CBC contacted Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day's office for a comment, the office said the minister would address the issue at the end of October.

The office was also directed not to provide statistics on prison waiting times for rehab programs.