Nearly half of youth incarcerated across Canada are Indigenous: Statistics Canada

by Kelly Geraldine Malone, Globe and Mail, June 24, 2018

Nearly half of all youth who end up in custody across Canada are Indigenous, a statistic that a Manitoba activist says shows unacceptable and systemic racism.

Data released by Statistics Canada shows Aboriginal youth made up 46 per cent of admissions to correctional services in 2016-17 while making up only eight per cent of the youth population.

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Justice system report slams Alberta for hiding Indigenous incarceration rates

By Geordon Omand, The Canadian Press, March 5, 2018

The government of Alberta is being lambasted in a review of Canada’s justice system as the only province to keep secret the number of Indigenous people it has locked up over the last five years.

Number of Indigenous people in prison now a human rights issue says Correctional Investigator

by Todd Lamirande, APTN National News, Oct 31, 2017

Canada’s Correctional Investigator said the number of Indigenous people locked up in prisons across the country is now a human rights issue.

“That the incarceration rate for Indigenous people keeps climbing year after year after year, relentlessly,” said Zinger.

Aboriginal women now make up one-third of Canadian female prison population

Poverty-related crimes are becoming ‘life-sentences’ for aboriginal women, NWAC says

CBC News, May 27, 2015

The number of aboriginal women in Canadian prisons is on the rise, according to the federal prison watchdog and the Native Women’s Association of Canada wants justice officials to do something about it.

Women of aboriginal decent now make up more than 35 per cent of the female prison population, Howard Sapers, Correctional Investigator of Canada, told CBC News this week. Aboriginal women represent about four per cent of the general population.

Aboriginal corrections report finds ‘systemic discrimination’

CBC News, Mar 7, 2013

Aboriginal people are so vastly over-represented in Canada’s federal prison system that current policies are clearly failing them, according to a new report by the Office of the Correctional Investigator.