AFN voices concerns about crime bill’s effects

OTTAWA — The government’s omnibus crime bill could put more aboriginals behind bars rather than addressing the source of high crime and incarceration rates among native Canadians, says the Assembly of First Nations.

The AFN told senators reviewing Bill C-10, known as the Safe Streets and Communities Act, that it could override rules allowing courts to consider alternatives to incarceration for aboriginal offenders, rules the Supreme Court outlined in its 1999 Gladue ruling.

Those rules have tried to deal with what the AFN argued were unique issues facing aboriginals that cannot always be addressed by the corrections system. The crime bill, the AFN argued, could remove more First Nations offenders from aboriginal rehabilitation programs. AFN National Chief Shawn Atleo said First Nations want to keep more of their offenders in aboriginal-run institutions where they can receive help from community elders and targeted rehabilitation plans.

“It’s a comparable approach at the federal level,” Atleo said via video conference from his home community of Ahousat, B.C.

The crime bill, he said, would reverse all that work. “I am very concerned with the direction this bill is taking us in,” Atleo said.

Research over the past 14 years has found that aboriginals make up a greater proportion of the inmate population in Canada, greater than the percentage of aboriginals in the general Canadian population. A 2009 study from Correctional Service Canada found aboriginals made up about 20 per cent of the prison population, despite representing about four per cent of the Canadian population.

The same study cited myriad factors affecting the incarceration rates of aboriginals, including low levels of educational attainment and higher rates of unemployment. Corrections research has also found that aboriginals are more likely to be repeat offenders and involved in violent crime.

AFN senior strategist Roger Jones told the committee that more aboriginals are becoming part of gangs involved in drug crimes and the reach of those gangs is widening in urban centres and aboriginal communities. The crime bill, Jones argued, could put more aboriginals behind bars because the crime bill targets repeat offenders and drug traffickers. “You can’t predict exactly how legislation is going to impact people, but you can do a good job,” Jones said.

Jones said the AFN doesn’t dispute the need to curb violent crime to make communities safer, but questioned whether investing in prevention rather than prisons might better serve aboriginals. “One of our messages is you either increase your costs by putting more of our people into the prison system, or you can invest in programs . . . that keep our people out of the prison system,” Jones said.

The Senate legal affairs committee will be reviewing the crime bill for the remainder of the week. On Friday afternoon, the committee is scheduled to debate each clause of the omnibus bill.

“One of our messages is you either increase your costs by putting more of our people into the prison system, or you can invest in programs ... that keep our people out of the prison system,” Jones said.