Saskatoon Correctional Centre expansion opens with focus on community reintegration

WATCH: The Saskatchewan government announced an expansion of one of the province's correctional centres back in 2020 and now the facility is operational.

The province of Saskatchewan has officially opened the Saskatoon Correctional Centre expansion.

The $135 million project was announced in 2020 and is intended to allow for more core correctional programming.

“The big thing is the space we have allocated, programing space that we just do not have in our current building due to the dated facility. And it will give us the flexibility and space to deliver correctional programing to do that meaningful work in addressing risk factors,” Tammy Holmes, director of the Saskatoon Correctional Centre, said.

The space will provide an additional 312 beds to house offenders. In addition to a medical unit, which includes dental and optical care, this additional space is intended to help offenders gain skills that will help them after release.

“A lot of the work that’s done within the facility is on the reintegration practices. It’s on providing the life skills and addictions treatment programming, things like that to address the underlying factors behind criminal behavior,” Tim McLeod, minister of policing and public safety, said.

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Thanks to community partnerships with organizations including the Saskatoon Tribal Council and John Howard Society, the new space will assist in connecting inmates with systems intended to help them with a variety of challenges.

“We have them while they’re in custody. We do what we can with the time they have, but it’s a village to get these people to a better life. We make sure that our community partners are able to come in and make those connections before they leave, so when they go into the community, that’s already made,” Scott Harron, assistant deputy minister of justice, said.

This new building is not intended to replace the existing one. According to Harron, the steady increase in incarcerated individuals makes all available space important.

“The custody population increased between about three and 10 per cent every year. Inevitably, that means that every once in a while, you need to build a new facility in order to accommodate those numbers,” Harron said.

Some inmates have already been moved into the new facility, and McLeod shared that the goal is to have all inmates intended to be transferred to the new units done so by Nov. 14.

“We know that crime is often a symptom of a different problem. If we’re addressing the underlying problem, it significantly reduces the risk that the individuals will ever come back to the correctional facility, which is the goal of the system, not to have them return,” McLeod said.