In Canada the Aboriginal prison population has increased 43 per cent in the past five years
/In an editorial, writer Lisa Kerr called it a “scandal (that) the aboriginal incarceration in Canada is getting worse.”
“The Correctional Investigator has advised that the aboriginal prison population has increased 43 per cent in the past five years. Métis, Inuit and First Nations people make up 23 per cent of the prison population, although they comprise just 4 per cent of the population of the country.
“Levels of imprisonment in Canada’s aboriginal communities are higher than the overall incarceration rate in the United States — a nation that famously has the highest rate of imprisonment in the world and probably in history.
“The United States has also had to grapple with the concentration of imprisonment on racial minorities, particularly young black men. Recent evidence indicates that this may not be an intractable problem. On March 1 a rare piece of good news came from a report by Marc Mauer, executive director of The Sentencing Project. Incarceration rates for black Americans dropped sharply from 2000 to 2009, especially for women. This improvement is attributed to drug law reforms and the restoration of some judicial discretion in sentencing.
“In Canada, we are moving backward: judicial discretion is on the chopping block and the Harper government has recently added mandatory drug sentences. These are not the reforms needed to address our aboriginal prison system.”
