The departments of Ministers Don Morgan and Yogi Huyghebaert need to talk more.
Morgan is the Justice leader and Huyghebaert is the Corrections leader and in combination, both had egg on their faces this week over the release of a woman from Pine Grove Correctional Centre in Prince Albert.
The woman in question was the feature of a news release saying she had been released before her sentence was up. A photo of the felon was also released at the time so citizens would be aware if she happened to be in their vicinity.
But wait — she wasn’t unlawfully at large after all. She, in fact, had served her full sentence and had every right to be in Calgary where she was eventually discovered.
The ministers issued an apology and agreed there has to be better communication between the departments. What an understatement.
It is irresponsible enough when prisoners are indeed released before their sentences are up. But this latest situation suggests there is something dangerously wrong with a system that can’t manage to figure out the paperwork of when a prisoner is free to leave or must be retained behind bars.
The woman in question has every right to be angry at her treatment at the hands of these ministries. And she is absolutely correct in pointing out the difficulty she will have in the future because now her name and face are known. She did the crime but she also did her time.
This incident is not the first to bring embarrassment to these departments and of course the ministers are defensive about what happened and how it was resolved in this case. Perhaps it is time for some top-down changes to get a better handle on how to read and interpret prisoner release papers.
