REGINA - The week at the legislature, the Opposition New Democrats were raising new concerns about Indigenous women being incarcerated in the province.
NDP First Nations and Métis Relations Critic Betty Nippi-Albright and Justice and Corrections Critic Nicole Sarauer were joined by representatives from the FSIN and other Indigenous organizations, calling for the Sask Party government to address an over-representation of Indigenous women in provincial correctional centres.
The NDP pointed to Saskatchewan having the highest rates of Indigenous incarceration among the provinces, at a rate 28.5 times higher than the non-Indigenous population. The next highest rate was in Alberta, at 15.5.
“This is not a new problem. The Sask Party has known about the over incarceration and over representation of Indigenous women in our justice system for years,” said Nippi-Albright.
They accused the government of failing to address the root causes such as poverty, mental health and addiction, and housing issues.
“How are we supposed to fix this if we aren’t willing to address the root of the problem? This is a top-down failure by this Sask. Party government to properly address the very issues that lead people to crime, like poverty, inadequate housing, and lack of mental health and addictions supports. This Sask. Party government has implemented a out of sight, out of mind strategy… We need to actually tackle the root causes of the problem, and ensure those services are in place, especially for those reintegrating into the community.”
They also pointed to the recent reports of overcapacity issues at Pine Grove Correctional Centre in Prince Albert. In their news release, the NDP noted that in July 2023 Pine Grove was housing 263 women with 156 of those were on remand — way above their capacity of 166.
“This over-incarceration continues to escalate, and there’s no real solutions being implemented, and that something that needs to be addressed. We need to bring more attention to it because currently it’s out of sight out of mind,” said FSIN Third Vice-Chief Aly Bear.
“And then when our people are criminalized they’re also dehumanized. We don’t think of the treatment they face when they’re incarcerated and also we don’t think of what their children are going through when their parents are incarcerated. We need to understand systemic racism, we need to understand racial profiling, and the reasons why our people are over-incarcerated, and why it is that we continue to suffer and pass on intergenerational trauma, while those we signed treaty with pass on inter-generational wealth from this land that we live on.”
