Pine Grove, other Sask. jails consistently overcapacity, provincial data shows

Pine Grove, other Sask. jails consistently overcapacity, provincial data shows

22 Apr, 2024

Only the Regina Correctional Centre didn’t report being overcapacity on any of the days tracked.

Provincial data shows three out of four of Saskatchewan’s adult provincial jails have been overcapacity since September, but none more so than the only women’s jail, Pine Grove Correctional Centre.

Postmedia requested single-day snapshots of inmate counts for the first day of each month from September to December 2022 and Jan. 5, 2023, for comparison with the facilities’ operational capacities.

Only Regina Correctional Centre, with the highest operational capacity among the jails of 782, reported no overcapacity on any of the days tracked.

The Saskatoon Correctional Centre, with a capacity of 507, reported slight overcapacity on the days tracked, and the Prince Albert Correctional Centre, with a capacity of 496, was overcapacity only on the first day of September, October and December.

Pine Grove, which has an operational capacity of 166, was overcapacity on every day tracked. On Sept. 1, the inmate count was 78 higher than the facility’s capacity. On Jan. 5, it was 24 inmates above capacity.

The Ministry of Corrections, Policing and Public Safety said in an email that it has contingency space in all of the facilities to “safely manage the offender population when over our operational capacity.”

The ministry declined to provide specifics of the contingency spaces, citing security and privacy reasons.

The issue is not new. The Elizabeth Fry Society of Saskatchewan has been monitoring it, especially in the fall of 2022, acting executive director Sydney Wouters said in an email this week. Pine Grove’s inmate count is often at around 190 women, so when it started to reach 240, the advocacy organization was concerned.

Wouters said inmates reported delays or temporary cancellation of programs due to lack of space, which can be a problem for women who need to take programs to be considered for reintegration leaves or transfer to the reintegration unit.

“With the count being as high as it has been, the gym has been used as a dorm unit to hold women,” Wouters said. “We heard from some women complaining about the wait times to see the doctor because there were so many women in the prison.”

Wouters noted the ratio of convicted inmates serving sentences to inmates on remand while awaiting trial isn’t reflected in the numbers provided. She said as much as 75 per cent of the population is on remand. Court worker advocates often see cases where a woman who could be released on bail or a promise to appear ends up remanded due to a lack of affordable housing or programs.

The jail is doing the best it can to manage the overcapacity and has released people eligible for reintegration leaves, but Corrections has no say in how many people are remanded because that process happens at the court level, Wouters added.

“Minister of Justice and Attorney General Bronwyn Eyre should be aware and looking at the number of remanded individuals in our province and looking into what the cause(s) of the high remand numbers are,” she wrote.

Adv