Advocates concerned as Saskatoon, Prince Albert correctional centres see large spike in COVID-19

More than 190 inmates have contracted COVID-19 since the beginning of the year at Saskatoon and Regina's provincially-run jails, raising safety concerns among inmate advocates.

On Monday, Saskatchewan's Ministry of Corrections, Policing and Public Safety reported 85 active cases among the 490 inmates at the Saskatoon Correctional Centre and 107 active cases among the 439 inmates at the Prince Albert Correctional Centre. 

Sherri Maier, founder of advocacy group Beyond Prison Walls Canada, is alarmed by the jump in cases and believes the government needs to do something.

"They should really consider letting some people out," Maier said.

Omicron spike

Both institutions started seeing a spike in cases at the beginning of January, fuelled by the easily-transmissible Omicron variant. And the ministry said there were 41 active cases in staff at Saskatoon Correctional and 33 cases in staff in Prince Albert.

In Regina, nine of 645 inmates and nine staff have been reported as testing positive so far this year.

Overall, Saskatchewan has 1,842 inmates and 968 people on remand currently in provincial correction centres.

Maier is concerned about the situation.

"I got a phone call about two weeks ago from a guy out of Saskatoon Correctional and he said it was horrible," Maier said.

"Pretty much all his unit had gotten COVID and it was a remand unit. A lot of people in these jails are not sentenced."  

Maier is asking the province to consider releasing more of the people serving time into other arrangements, such as house arrest. 

She notes that provincial correctional centres deal with inmates serving sentences of less than two years, as well as people who have been remanded until their trial date, which means they have not been convicted.

"If they only have two or three months left on their sentence, if they're a role-model inmate, get them out," Maier said.

While the Ministry of Corrections said it is not considering letting inmates out early, there has been some movement by prosecutors to consider remanding fewer people during the current wave of the pandemic.

The ministry said each case is examined individually during a bail hearing and the final decision to release a person on bail is up to the judge.

Crowded situation

Pierre Hawkins, public legal counsel for advocacy group John Howard Society of Saskatchewan, said the COVID-19 outbreak has uncovered problems in the correctional system as a whole.

He said limits on visitation and programming during the pandemic might help reduce COVID numbers, but are very hard on inmates.

"We're talking about a population that has a high rate of underlying and chronic health problems, both physical and mental," Hawkins said.

"We have a lot of inmates that are spending a lot of time confined to their cells as a result of the COVID 19 outbreaks. And that puts significant strain on their mental health."

Hawkins said Saskatchewan has among the highest remand rates per 100,000 of the adult population in the entire country, which has led to crowded conditions that have only been made worse by the pandemic. 

"There are more people in jail and on remand than there need to be," he said.

"As a result, you can understand how that resulted in overcrowding and resulted in a situation where transmissible disease spreads through facilities pretty easily."

Masks and testing

Meanwhile, the province's Corrections Ministry is doing its best to keep cases as low as possible, said Noel Busse, a ministry spokesperson.

Rapid testing and PCR testing are both available to staff and inmates, he said. All new inmates are tested and screened when they are admitted and again after 15 days.

Any inmates with symptoms are also tested if they've been shown to be a close contact through contact tracing. And continuous masking is required for all inmates and staff.

Vaccines are also being made available to inmates.

The correctional centres have also brought in extra cleaning measures and have set up temporary quarantine buildings if inmates need to be separated.

While the Saskatchewan Health Authority has drafted a plan to redeploy civil servants to work in hospitals, there are no similar plans to staff correctional centres if staffing levels fall, Busse said.

"We do have contingency plans in place and we're constantly reviewing those and making sure that we have the staff available to properly run the correctional facility," he said.

"We have full confidence the staff are doing everything they can do to limit the spread of COVID 19 in the facility," Busse said. "Our staff have done an excellent job of maintaining those precautions and they've gotten very good at it, unfortunately, over the last couple of years," he said.