SASKATOON — The Saskatchewan NDP is calling on the government to be transparent about how five inmates were incorrectly released, an issue it says is particularly concerning for community and public safety in the province and raises many questions.
On Wednesday, July 8, outside the Saskatoon cabinet office, Justice, Attorney General and Community Safety Shadow Minister Nicole Sarauer called on the government to release more information about the mistake, such as whether the inmates were released from multiple facilities across the province.
“We don't know whether or not this is an issue that happened at one specific courthouse, or whether or not this is something that happened at multiple correctional facilities. We don't know what the problem is,” said Sarauer, the Regina Douglas Park MLA.
“Government hasn't really been transparent in terms of what the issue was that caused these inmates from being incorrectly released, we also don't know, for a few of them, we don't know how long they were wrongly released.”
Sarauer said the Opposition is raising public awareness because it is a public safety issue, and inmates who were sentenced to a specific term should serve the sentence imposed by the criminal justice system to maintain people’s trust and the institution’s integrity.
She added that the Ministry of Justice and the Attorney General, headed by Moose Jaw North MLA Tim McLeod, has not said how it learned about the problem or how long it took to realize that mistakes had been made in the wrongful release of the five inmates.
“There are a lot of questions, not a lot of answers from the minister, which is why we are calling for the government to launch an independent investigation, but also to publicly report on the findings of that investigation,” said Sarauer.
“[And] with recommendations and commitments to implementing those recommendations to ensure that this doesn't happen again. We don’t know the details about these inmates. We don't know what risk this presented to the public. Very little was provided to the public by the ministry.”
She said the Justice Ministry's failure to disclose these releases to the public in error is a public concern and shows a government more interested in hiding the problems than in being transparent and addressing them.
"We've been calling for more transparency from [the] government. It shouldn't have taken several months for the public to become aware that an inmate had been wrongly released. If an inmate is wrongly released, that information should be provided to the public immediately,” she added.
“The government should be transparent as to what occurred that caused the wrong release. We're calling for government transparency and accountability. It's like I said, when these things happen, it can diminish the public's confidence in our justice system. And that's a very serious issue.”
SaskToday reached out to the government for comment, but it had yet to respond at the time of publication.
