SaskatchewanThe Saskatchewan government says a major expansion at the Saskatoon Correctional Centre is now complete, with the addition of 312 beds for men in custody at the remand centre.Province says facility will ease overcrowding in jails, but critics say it won’t make community saferJeffery Tram · CBC News · Posted: Sep 18, 2025 6:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 3 hours agoThe expansion at the Saskatoon Correctional Centre will add 312 beds for male offenders. (Thomas Simon/Radio Canada)The Saskatchewan government says a major expansion at the Saskatoon Correctional Centre is now complete, with the addition of 312 beds for men in custody at the remand centre.The project was originally announced in 2020 with a $120-million price tag. The province said at the time it was part of a two-year, $7.5-billion stimulus plan. Construction began in 2021.The Saskatchewan Party government said in a Wednesday news release that the project was completed with a $135-million budget, and includes a new medical unit and clinic, expanded programming space, upgraded video court suites and a kitchen to serve inmates across the facility.The Ministry of SaskBuilds and Procurement will manage day-to-day building maintenance.Corrections Minister Tim McLeod says the expansion will address the issue of the province’s overcrowded jails.”It’s going to alleviate some of the pressure within the custodial system,” McLeod said on Wednesday.$135M expansion of Saskatoon Correctional Centre complete The province says the new remand facility will ease overcrowding in jails, but advocates argue spending more money on jail cells — instead of supports — doesn’t make communities any safer.The upgrades will not just add capacity, but help address the root causes of crime through treatment, health care and education opportunities, McLeod said.”This facility is really offering more space for the offenders on the rehabilitation programming,” he said.But critics say building more cells isn’t the way to make communities safer.Shawn Fraser, CEO of the John Howard Society of Saskatchewan, says the money would have been better spent on prevention.”I don’t think particularly [this] is an investment to make community safer. It’s to address the problem of overcrowding,” Fraser said.Fraser says adding more space risks creating a cycle of expansion without addressing why people end up incarcerated in the first place.Shawn Fraser, CEO of the John Howard Society of Saskatchewan, says it is more important to invest in community supports than more jails. (Thomas Simon/Radio Canada)”If you build it, they will come, and we create a new jail and it just gets full. And then we need another jail and another jail and another jail,” he said.The province did not indicate how many inmates the Saskatoon Correctional Centre held before the expansion at the time of the publication.Fraser says real public safety comes from investing in housing, education, health care and employment opportunities. Without improvements in those areas, the cycle of crime and incarceration will continue, he says.”We believe that the right place to invest is in helping make sure people, when they leave prison, don’t come back,” he said.ABOUT THE AUTHORJeffery is a reporter with CBC Saskatchewan in Regina. He previously worked at CBC Toronto as an associate producer. You can reach him at jeffery.tram@cbc.ca.With files from Aishwarya Dudha
$135M expansion of Saskatoon Correctional Centre complete
