Dancing for thanks
Stella Cote s son is also an inmate at the correctional facility. She said she was dancing as a way to say thanks to the correctional staff for providing inmates with better living conditions, including time to go outside instead of being locked up in their cells for most of the day. I m actually happy we did the protest last week because things have been changing ever since, Cote said. We re going to fight, no matter what, we re still here, they re not alone.
Stella Cote (pictured) says she wants to see more programming to inmates in the jail.(Bryan Eneas/CBC News)
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The Saskatoon provincial jail has resumed accepting new inmates after admissions were temporarily halted during a COVID-19 outbreak that affected up to 150 inmates and 59 staff.
Active cases among both staff and inmates fell to zero this week, with no reported active cases connected to the outbreak, which was declared Nov. 17, according to the Ministry of Corrections, Policing and Public Safety.
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The jail admitted 20 new inmates when admissions resumed on Wednesday and two remand inmates tested positive coming into the admissions unit, according to the ministry. This accounts for the two known cases reported at the jail as of Thursday evening. They are in isolation.
REGINA The transfer of prisoners from Saskatoon has added to the number of COVID-19 cases at the Regina Correction Centre, after three prisoners tested positive for the virus upon arrival. Several vans with prisoners from Saskatoon arrived at the Regina Correctional Centre on the weekend. A representative from SGEU said the inmates were transferred from a Saskatoon Police station, not from the correctional centre. Corrections said the prisoners were not tested for the virus until they arrived in Regina. Some have since been released into the community but must self isolate in hotels. The John Howard Society is calling for voluntary testing for guards and prisoners at all corrections facilities.
As of Dec. 15, six offenders at the Regina jail were classified as positive with COVID-19. In Saskatoon, there were 86 staff and inmates positive. There are 23 positive cases at the Prince Albert Correctional Centre and three at the Pine Grove Correctional Centre.
Kilburn Hall, a youth facility in Saskatoon, has two inmates and one staff positive.
The union that speaks for correctional workers is frustrated by the lack of widespread testing at the jails, and the response from the Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA) and Corrections, Policing and Public Safety.
On Dec. 11, Saskatchewan Government Employees Union (SGEU) sent a letter to the health authority asking that all inmates and staff in provincial correctional centres be allowed to volunteer for testing.
SASKATOON A newly released Saskatoon Provincial Correctional Centre (SPCC) inmate says he learned he had COVID-19 shortly after he was released. He believes he contracted the illness due to the handling of a still-active coronavirus outbreak that began at the facility in late November. “They play with our lives,” Kevin Crane said. “COVID is a sentence as well, might as well include that in our sentences.” As of Wednesday, 67 inmates and 18 staff members were infected with COVID-19 at SPCC, according to the province. Crane, 44, was sent to the jail in early September to serve a sentence. Shortly before he was released on Dec. 9, Crane said two inmates in his unit became infected with COVID-19.