The FSIN regrets that these women do not have access to community services and lack support due to a lack of resources.
This lack of resources often forces them, according to the FSIN, to remain in prison during their pre-trial detention, when they have not yet been tried.
Statistics show Saskatchewan has the highest remand rate in the country, three times the national average.
Do more for the reintegration of women
With the impact of COVID-19, Elizabeth Fry Company Director Patti Tait laments that some trials have been significantly delayed. Some women can sometimes wait a year before being found not guilty: They thus lose a year of their life.
Just like the FSIN, Patti Tait calls on the provincial and federal governments to invest in prevention and reintegration structures in indigenous communities.
Rather than increasing the number of places in correctional centers, most of which are on remand, we need to offer more services and support, with a community that is there to help women.
Ms. Tait hopes that organizations like hers will have better access to inmates to help them prepare for their release and reintegration and that they will not be left to fend for themselves.
She also deplores the fate of Kimberly Squirrel, an Indigenous woman found dead in Saskatoon a few days after being released from the Pine Grove Correctional Center.
The numbers in the province and the country
Indigenous women made up more than 42% of inmates in Canada, according to a January 2020 release from Correctional Investigator of Canada, Ivan Zinger.
According to Statistics Canada, just over 14,000 women incarcerated in the country in 2018-2019 were Indigenous, although these do not represent, according to the FSIN, that 4% of the population.
The FSIN says that in Pine Grove Correctional Center north of Prince Albert, 90% of female inmates are Indigenous, compared to just 16% of the province’s population.
In Saskatchewan, 15% of women inmates for the 2018-2019 period were Indigenous, or just over 1,900 people, according to Statistics Canada.
While Canada’s Indigenous population is 4%, Indigenous people account for over 30% of incarcerations across the country, according to Ivan Zinger.
With information from Zoé Clin
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