Buffalo Narrows jail closure costs more than jobs: critics

Correction workers in Buffalo Narrows are trying to rally support from the surrounding communities in hope of stopping the closure of the Buffalo Narrows Community Correctional Centre.

On Saturday, a community meeting was held to discuss the closure, which will result in the loss of 15 jobs in the community as of July 31.

“We’re just looking to try and keep the centre open, with the community, and the surrounding communities of northern Saskatchewan, helping us,” said corrections worker Ashley Daigneault, who attended the meeting.

The provincial government estimates the closure, announced in the recent budget, will save $661,000 this fiscal year and $1 million in annual operating costs thereafter.

However, Daigneault said more is at stake than jobs, because the closure will remove training opportunities and uproot inmates who have established good relationships with correctional staff.

“Northern Saskatchewan has little support, little programming,” Daigneault said. “Why take what little we have?”

Christine Tell, the minister responsible for corrections and policing, said the closure “was not an easy decision,” but it was one the province had to make.

“Everything is a competing interest when you’re looking at a budget,” Tell said.

She said operational funding for the Prince Albert Correctional Centre and capital funding for the new Saskatchewan Hospital in North Battleford were some of the projects Buffalo Narrows was competing with for budget consideration.

Inmates will be moved to Besnard Lake Correctional Camp in La Ronge, the Prince Albert provincial jail and the Battlefords jail, which will likely remove their family supports, since relatives won’t be able to visit them as often, if at all.

Tell said while the government understands there are concerns about the effect a relocation will have on inmates and the community, reopening the Besnard Lake camp could mean some inmates will be housed nearby.

“Yes, we’re removing it from Buffalo Narrows, but there’s lots of communities that don’t have correctional facilities in their communities,” she said.

“It’s just tough decisions that we had to make.”

Buckley Belanger, NDP MLA for Athabasca, said the province should be doing everything it can to rehabilitate inmates rather than placing them in larger facilities, away from their families and known staff.

“Unfortunately, some of these larger centres, they have more career criminals and much more proficient criminals, and guess who learns from that? A lot of these people who leave these communities for the first time,” he said. “They get exposed to that and they become better, more proficient criminals.”

Belanger, who attended the community meeting as a guest, said emotions ranged from shock to anger.

“Nobody — obviously — saw this coming,” he said, noting the community and corrections staff have been working to provide as many options as possible for rehabilitation, including providing volunteer services in the community.

With concerns about overcrowding raised elsewhere in the province, he views the closure as “illogical,” Belanger said, adding the NDP will meet with the appropriate parties to try to reverse the decision. He is scheduled to meet with other elected officials from Buffalo Narrows on Thursday.

Drew Wilby, a spokesman for the department of policing and corrections, said the province has enough space to adequately support all of Saskatchewan’s inmates and there are no plans to reopen the facility.