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One small way to mitigate the resulting harm is to ensure that mothers and children are able to stay in contact with each other. Unfortunately, staying in touch by telephone can be difficult.

Provincial policies dictate that inmates be allowed “reasonable contact” with their families and friends on the outside. The government has a contract with a private Texas-based prison phone company to provide secure calling at correctional centres. It defrays the costs of this system by charging incarcerated people for phone calls. Local calls cost around $1.50, and long-distance calls are much more expensive, at $7 or more for a 20-minute call.

These fees create a significant barrier for people in prison who are trying to maintain contact with families, and they have a disproportionate effect on incarcerated women and their children. There are multiple correctional centres across Saskatchewan for men, but only one provincial facility for women — the Pine Grove Correctional Centre in Prince Albert. Many of these women have children who often live in communities other than Prince Albert, and thus are more likely to have to pay long-distance calling fees.

The real cost of calling is best understood when compared to the scarce resources of people in prison, who already tend to be economically marginalized. A woman at Pine Grove will earn only $1 per day, unless she is fortunate enough to get a job in the institution, which can increase her income to $3 or $5 a day. Given the cost of calling, a woman who makes $1 a day has to wait a week before she can have a 20-minute long-distance phone conversation with her children. While guards can exercise discretion to allow a mother to call her children without charge, women cannot necessarily count on this.