Canada’s correctional investigator says stronger leadership and improved implementation of mandated Aboriginal initiatives are needed to address a growing crisis in our prisons
More than twenty years after Parliament enacted the Corrections and Conditional Release Act allowing the Correctional Service of Canada to enhance Aboriginal community involvement in corrections and respond to the unique needs and circumstances that contribute to high incarceration rates for Aboriginal people, disparities in opportunities and outcomes between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal offenders continue to widen, finds a report issued by the Correctional Investigator of Canada. (more…)
A report by Canada’s Correctional Investigator Howard Sapers has found that disparities in opportunities and outcomes between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal offenders continue to widen. Aboriginal offenders now account for 21.5% of Correctional Service of Canada’s (CSC) incarcerated population and 13.6% of offenders supervised in the community. The total Aboriginal offender population (community and institutional) represents 18.5% of all federal offenders. The situation of Aboriginal female offenders is even more concerning. In 2010-11, Aboriginal women accounted for over 31.9% of all federally incarcerated women,9 representing an increase of 85.7% over the last decade. 
A report by Howard Sapers, Canada’s Correctional Investigator, has found that over-representation of Aboriginal people in federal corrections is pervasive and growing. Today, 23% of the federal incarcerated population is Aboriginal, a 43% increase in the Aboriginal inmate population since 2005/6. One in three federally sentenced women offenders are Aboriginal. The highest concentration of Aboriginal prisoners is in the Prairie Region, and recent growth in correctional populations is primarily attributable to rising numbers of Aboriginal admissions and readmissions. 
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The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in northern British Columbia has failed to protect indigenous women and girls from violence, adding to longstanding tensions between the RCMP and indigenous communities in the region, according to a report by Human Rights Watch. 
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