SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - If you watch a lot of prison movies, the North Slave Correctional Centre's new warden may not be what you would expect.

Standing outside on a wet and windy day, Midge Ravensdale could be any woman and the North Slave Correctional facility any building. But, don't be fooled, Ravensdale is the warden and North Slave is her domain. - Lauren McKeon/NNSL photo

"There's always that assumption that (the warden) would be a male," says Midge Ravensdale, a petite, blonde, blue-eyed woman who came out of retirement to take on the job.

Women like her, and the many others now starting careers in correctional services, are burying the assumption in the past. Ravensdale will hold the post for 12 to 18 months, during which time she will hire, train and mentor the next warden.

The warden started her own career as a parole officer in Calgary. From there, she climbed the ladder quickly, moving up to become the NWT director of correctional services in less than 20 years.

She occupied that spot from 1995 to 1998, during which time she was responsible for all the jails in the NWT, including those in what would become Nunavut.

After that, Ravensdale went on to spend 12 years as Northern Ontario's regional jail director where the operation of nine jails rested on her shoulders. One of those jails included the Central North Correctional Centre "super jail" in Penetanguishene.

During her time in Ontario, Ravensdale won a leadership award from Ontario Women in Law Enforcement.

Women's participation in correctional services has changed since she started her career, she says.

"The number of women in corrections has certainly changed over the years. (Now) there's a lot more women working in corrections," says Ravensdale, adding when she left her spot in Ontario, all four adult institution regional directors were women. "That's a bit unusual."

Indeed, Ravensdale says she was the only woman working in a supervisory role when she started at "Edmonton max" in the early 1980s.

"I got drawn in at a time when they wanted to promote women within corrections so that they could make more women feel comfortable coming in to work in institutions," she says.

"It was a bit of a challenge and I always liked a challenge - that was one of the reasons I went to Edmonton max," she adds.

And while that particular challenge may have passed for Ravensdale, there will still be plenty of others to keep her busy as the new warden. As she sees it, there are two big ones facing North Slave.

"Number one is the changing face and profile of our offenders, not only in the North, but right across Canada," says Ravensdale.

The big difference is the changing number of sentenced offenders, those convicted of a crime and serving time, versus remand offenders, those awaiting a court date to determine whether they are guilty or innocent.

"It used to be that when you had a facility here in the NWT, you would have mainly sentenced offenders, as opposed to remand offenders, which means you have people ready for programs," she explains.

With a higher concentration of remand prisoners comes a higher number of prisoners potentially only in jail for a short time.

"They're not quite ready yet to be involved in programming. It makes it more difficult to make that positive impact on them for when they're going out the door," she says. "So we have to redesign and revisit some of our programs and we're in the process of doing that now."

Ravensdale sees an ageing workforce as her next big challenge, and is looking to bring young blood on staff. Until she raises the next warden into the warden's post, she is happy to be out of retirement and working in the North.

"I wasn't quite ready to be in full retirement and ... I've always liked living in Yellowknife," she says. "It was just a good opportunity."