The Humboldt Uniplex was full of “jailbirds” on Jan. 12 as the Canadian Cancer Society hosted their annual Jail & Bail event.
The concept for the jail and bail was quite simple.
The jail part allowed people to either “snitch” on a family member or friend or turn themselves in by calling the Canadian Cancer Society or visiting their website.
The bail part of the event saw the “criminals” collect pledges so they could post “bail”.
Once registered for the event each participant received an online registration that they could use to collect pledges online, to allow for people outside the area to still pledge them.
On top of the online pledge forms, participants also collected offline pledges for those people who wanted to make donations in person.
Once thrown into the “jail”, participants were required to make phone calls asking people for pledges to help them meet their bail.
All the money collected during the event goes straight to the Canadian Cancer Society for research projects, support services in the community and advocating for public policies.
Sophie Pitman, event planner and campaign assistant, said that the event is good for everyone involved.
“These events are great, they’re really fun, it gets the community involved and it provides awareness (about cancer).”
On the day of the event, the people that were volunteered, either by themselves or by someone else, were “arrested” by detectives for their “crime” and taken to the Uniplex.
Examples of potential crimes include failure to use your inside voice or theft of an office pen. From there they were required to stand before a judge where they were officially “charged” with a crime and bail was set. From there they were taken to jail where they started making phone calls.
The arrest times were worked around the schedule of the participant, meaning if you only had an hour of free time then you would only be arrested for that one hour.
If participants were too busy to actually be brought into the jail then they were placed under “house arrest” and could continue raising money, the same as a person that was in the jail.
After the event, the Canadian Cancer Society made arrangements with those people under house arrest to pick up the donation.
One of Humboldt’s most wanted people for the jail & bail was Dean Possberg of the Humboldt Home Hardware, something Possberg was more than okay with.
“It feels good (to be one of the most wanted) because we are going to be doing something good for the Cancer Society,” he said.
Since Possberg was one of the most wanted, he had the task of raising a larger amount of bail then most of the other participants. Possberg’s bail was set at $1,500.
Possberg said this was an easy event to get involved with because he has a personal connection. His aunt is a breast cancer survivor and his uncle passed away as a result of cancer.
As a result, Possberg said that being apart of cancer society events and raising money to find a cure are, “very important for our families.”
Possberg started raising money well before the event itself got underway using Facebook as his main advertising medium.
He said he kept posting links to the jail and bail website hoping that his friends would click the link and make a donation. Possberg said that Facebook worked well and he was able to raise a good amount of the bail before the event even started.
It is a good fundraiser for people to get involved in, says Possberg,
“A cure for cancer could be just around the corner,” said Possberg.
The jail and bail has been a staple in the province of Saskatchewan since approximately 1986, starting first in the bigger centres like Regina and Saskatoon.
Over the years as the event has grown bigger they have started moving into smaller communities as well. This year, in addition to the jail and bail, the Canadian Cancer Society took advantage of the Christmas season hosting a Christmas themed jail and bail where people were put on Santa’s naughty list.
