The Ministry of Justice is taking a hard look into its policies around secure custody at correctional centers following a steep rise in the number of people who have escaped custody in Saskatchewan.
As of January, there have been 13 offenders who’ve escaped secure custody, eight of those were from secure youth custody and five from adult custody.
The most recent offender who escaped was Michael Montgrand, a dangerous prisoner who managed to evade guards while being taken to court.
Meanwhile, Travis Funk was the 12th person of 2016 to escape and remains at large.
Drew Wilby with the Ministry of Justice sat down with Teri Fikowski to discuss the rise and plans to curb the numbers.
Q: First and foremost, can you clarify the difference between secure custody and open custody?
A: Secure custody is what we would consider our traditional jail where offenders, whether they be youth or adults, are locked in largely 24/7. They’re given some outdoor time of course. Our open custody is more the opportunity to leave the facility. It tends to be on the youth side of things where they can go to things like school or programming in the community. They are then brought back to the facility and expected to stay in the facility overnight. The challenge with open custody is legally by the Youth Criminal Justice Act we can’t lock them in the facility, so if they do choose to go, they can flee. However, at the same time, they are subject to another criminal offense when they do.
Q: Is it safe to say that secure custody would be more dangerous offenders?
A: It’s up to a court to decide where to place somebody but that is a fair assessment definitely. Those that are more dangerous are going to have a secure sentence or who’ve committed more crimes.
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Q: There’s been 13 secure custody escapes so far this year, that’s 13 more than 2014 and 2015. Any reason for the increase this year?
A: One escape for us is too many. The onus of responsibility is on us to ensure community safety. That’s our number one priority and our commitment to the people of Saskatchewan is to make sure they feel safe in their community. A big part of that is making sure our offenders stay where they are supposed to be, which is behind the walls of our secure custody facility. We are looking at why there has been a bit of a rise this year. If you’ve looked over past years, there has been numbers like that previously but we’re doing an overall review as well as independent individual reviews on each of those escapes to determine what’s happening with our facilities.
Q: Is there any idea if it stems from lack of staff, lack of funding?
A: That review is looking at all kinds of things. It’s looking at our infrastructure. It’s looking into our security protocols.
Are we meeting best practices that the rest of Canada is achieving? We believe we are but the time is now to look at that and make sure that’s actually the case.
I will say our staff is our number one resource out there. They are incredibly valuable in providing information back in terms of what’s going on the floor of the correctional centres and they are doing a great job out there in our facilities.
Q: Any idea when we can expect the review?
A: The overall report we hope to have wrapped up early into the new year. Often time with these things there are safety and security concerns, so we can’t release those details but what we can release we definitely will be open and transparent with the public.
Anyone with information on Travis Funk’s whereabouts is asked to contact Saskatoon police at 306-975-8300 or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477.
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