Justice failing Indigenous peoples

In 1996 — more than a quarter of a century ago — Jean Chrétien’s federal Liberals vowed to end the shocking over-representation of Indigenous women and men in the country’s prisons.

A laudable — even noble promise — it was neither the first nor last time the government of Canada would target a status quo that serves the interests of no one. Not the general public and surely not the country’s Indigenous peoples. Indeed, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s 2021 mandate letters to the ministers of Justice and Public Safety called for similarly strong and decisive action — and that was just a few months ago.

But if governments are to be judged by what they do, not just by what they say, repeated promises from Ottawa in 1996 and the years since can be described only as an abject, dispiriting failure on the part of everyone who has held the reins of power in this country. In 1997, the year after prime minister Chretien’s government said it would treat an open wound in our correctional system, 12 per cent of the prison population was Indigenous. Yet as of last week, Indigenous peoples made up a full 32.7 per cent of the prison population even though they accounted for just five per cent of the country’s overall population. And for the first time ever, the 298 Indigenous women behind bars represent exactly half of the female prison population.

The tragedy these numbers reveal is a human, not statistical, one. Canadians are witnessing nothing less than the bitter results of centuries of misguided government policies that began with the massive takeover of Indigenous territories and the erosion of their traditional ways of life, then continued with the destructive residential school system, the traumatic “Sixties Scoop” of Indigenous children from their communities and a dysfunctional Indigenous child welfare system.

It is one thing to say justice should be blind and deliver rulings and sentences without fear or favour to whomever appears in a court of law. Or that individuals should be held responsible for their actions. But to be blind to the conditions of inadequate housing, unsafe water supplies and poverty that blight too many Indigenous communities across the country will in no way help create the conditions in which true justice — achieving what is right — will flourish.

Two years ago, the Correctional Investigator of Canada, Ivan Zinger, wrote: “The Indigenization of Canada’s prison population is nothing short of a travesty.” Although the non-Indigenous prison population was then falling, it was going the opposite way for First Nations, Métis and Inuit people. Meanwhile, Indigenous people tended to receive higher security classifications and lower reintegration scores than non-Indigenous prisoners which gave them fewer opportunities of serving parts of their sentences outside high-security prisons. That only boosted the rates of recidivism. And things have only gotten worse since then.

The realists among us might point out that the most serious social ills defy quick and simple remedies. Even so, there have been promising, expert recommendations made to various federal governments that have never implemented. In 2004, Howard Sapers, who was then the correctional investigator, said the Correctional Service of Canada should have a deputy commissioner tasked entirely with overseeing Indigenous programs and working with Indigenous communities. Nothing happened.

In 2019, the National Inquiry in Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls reiterated the suggestion as one of its 231 calls for justice. In response, the Trudeau government agreed to hire a deputy commissioner for Indigenous corrections. But as of last week, it had not begun the hiring process. If this government can’t hire one more bureaucrat, will it ever be capable of introducing all the other profound reforms that are necessary?

For instance, Zinger wants the Correctional Service of Canada to earmark a sizable portion of its budget for Indigenous community groups. That would allow them to fund Indigenous-operated correctional services across the country. There’s no guarantee such a measure would turn things around overnight — or even at all. But what Canadians are witnessing today — when the faces of the nation’s prison population are increasingly Indigenous — is a correctional system itself in need of correction.