The Elizabeth Fry Society is concerned that a decision to move incarcerated women to the Miramichi Youth Centre is not fair because it will cut off the women from their family and friends.

Last week, 29 women were transferred from the Saint John Correctional Centre to the jail in Miramichi.

Denise Durette, the co-ordinator for the Elizabeth Fry Society, said most of those women come from the province's southern cities and now they are completely cut off.

“Their family has no money to even go up there and visit them. Six hundred kilometres back and forth from Saint John is way too much for the gas,” she said.

The government’s decision has also had other side effects.

The society's award-winning Read Aloud program has ended because nobody can get books and cassettes to the women so they can read aloud to their children on recordings that get sent home.

'The amount of money it's going to cost the taxpayers is enormous.'—Denise Durette, Elizabeth Fry Society

And Durette said the costs of transporting women to lawyers and courtrooms is going to skyrocket now that the women are in Miramichi.

“The amount of money it's going to cost the taxpayers is enormous,” Durette said.

The Department of Public Safety said by concentrating all the women inmates in Miramichi where the staff are well-trained, the women will get better access to educational and rehabilitative services.

The cost of transferring the female inmates to Miramichi from Saint John will be paid by the Department of Justice.

The transfer of female inmates to the northern jail has created a stir in the legal community.

On Tuesday, while sentencing a Rothesay woman on an impaired driving conviction, Judge Henrik Tonning expressed frustration that she would have to serve three days in jail, three hours away.

Tonning said it all raises serious questions about equal access to justice.

The presence of adults in the youth centre has been a controversy for several years. There are roughly 110 beds in the Miramichi youth jail. But there are typically only 30 occupied by young offenders.

At one point, the youth centre held 60 adult inmates, according to the provincial government.

Loss of bus passes

The inmates' transfer is not the only government decision that is being criticized.

Since the provincial government has stopped giving bus passes to female prisoners when they are released, Durette said the women will be in danger when trying to get home after serving their sentences.

"So what is a woman going to do? She's going to hitchhike when she gets released?" Durette said.

"There's going to be a very high risk that she's going to be raped or killed or their pimp is going to come and get them or their drug dealer to continue doing what they were doing before they got in."