Pilot program in Sask. aims to better reintegrate women from prison into community

The Saskatchewan government and Saskatoon Tribal Council (STC) are making a joint effort to reduce the number of young Indigenous women who re-enter correctional custody by offering support to female offenders when they're released.

Corrections, Policing and Public Safety Minister Christine Tell announced the new pilot program, which will provide $3.6 million to the Saskatoon Tribal Council over three years. 

There's also an option to extend it another year or two, Tell said.

That funding will help STC provide up to a year and a half of intensive support to female offenders who frequently return to custody for minor offences, offering them services including mental health, addictions and cultural supports.

Tell touted it as the province's first Indigenous-designed and delivered reintegration program during a news conference Friday.

"If they're continually coming back into into our institutions, their communities are suffering, they're suffering," Tell said.

While STC Chief Mark Arcand said the program is open to all women, he said it will focus on Indigenous women aged 18 to 33 who repeatedly return to custody for minor offences. 

Tell said the women are often remanded for a week and, if they're sentenced to custody, serve an average of 30 days. It limits their ability to access reintegration programs that others use, she said.

In December 2021, Canada's prison ombudsman found Indigenous women make up almost half the female prison population.

The program will help up to 60 women — both Indigenous and non-Indigenous — from the Pine Grove Correctional Centre.

The focus will be on healing, wellness, education, training and employment, housing and promoting positive relationships.

"This is this is a good start and we're going to continue," said Tell.

Arcand said the program was originally to be called Back to Basics, but that Elders took the name to ceremony and came back with "Īkwēskīcik iskwēwak," a Cree name that translates to "turning around women."

"When we speak about turning around, it's to have a quality of life, and that quality of life is helping them to have a better life through culture, through language, through identity, through programs, through service," he said.