Canada’s prisons watchdog said officials have made little progress in improving conditions and outcomes for Indigenous inmates.
Correctional Investigator Dr. Ivan Zingler found Indigenous Peoples are entering the system younger and at an increasing rate. They spend more time behind bars and return to federal institutions at unprecedented rates compared to non-Indigenous people.
“We found terrible outcomes with respect to Indigenous People who are incarcerated in federal corrections. And these included for example, being overrepresented in use of force, overrepresented in maximum security institutions, and overrepresented in structured intervention units, which is the former administrative segregation regime. They are more likely to also be labeled as gang members, more likely to self injure, and more likely to attempt suicide,” said Zingler. “The great majority are being released, that is statutory release, which is that two thirds and of course, they tend to do poorly upon release, because their needs haven’t been properly addressed. So they are more likely to have their parole revoked, and their rates of recidivism is off the chart, reaching 65 percent.”
32 percent of the federal inmate population is Indigenous, 50 percent in women’s facilities. Yet Aboriginal Peoples only comprise of five percent of Canada’s population.
Zingler has previously recommended that Canada increase the use of healing lodges, examine community release and engage with Indigenous communities. These recommendations were contained in a 2013 report titled: Spirit Matters: Aboriginal People and the Corrections and Conditional Release Act tabled in Parliament.
Since that time, Zingler found little progress as only one new healing lodge was constructed, there are low occupancy rates within healing lodges and not much applicable change to community release supervision.
“I will tell you that I think the one most promising to try and to address those poor correctional outcomes would be to transfer large amounts of the Correctional Services budget to fund healing lodges, and also provide opportunities for Indigenous communities to also supervise Indigenous People in their communities. And that hasn’t, it simply hasn’t happened,” Zingler said.