Watchdog Reports Canada Failing to Address Needs of Aboriginal Inmates

This article was last updated on April 16, 2022

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The correctional services watchdog recently identified that the Aboriginal Canadians are excessively represented in the prison system, and even though efforts are being made since two decades for addressing their high rates of confinement, the difference is getting worse.

The report submitted by the Correctional Investigator of Canada, Howard Sapers, on Thursday mentioned that the efforts made by the federal correctional system in the past 20 years did not only completely failed at improving the situation, but they are also perpetuating “conditions of disadvantage.” Sapers mentioned that “close to one-in-four inmates in federal penitentiaries today are of Aboriginal ancestry, yet Aboriginal-specific legislative provisions are chronically under-funded, under-utilized and unevenly applied by the Correctional Service.”

The report, entitled “Spirit Matters: Aboriginal People and the Corrections and Conditional Release Act,” focuses on two specific sections of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act (CCRA). The first, Section 81, streamlines rules regarding the transfer of Aboriginal offender from federal custody to an Aboriginal community facility. Whereas, the second, Section 84, allows those communities a complete role in the release of Aboriginal offenders. The report submitted by Sapers points out that just four agreements have been struck under the terms of Section 81, which wholly amount to a total of 68 beds in four locations countrywide. It also reveals that no new facilities have been made since 2001, even though there has been an overwhelming increase of 40-per-cent in the population of Aboriginals incarcerated. This implies that the existing facilities are not updated to accommodate two per cent of federally sentenced Aboriginal offenders.

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1 Comment

  1. Saper’s criticisms are equally valcomment_ID when applied to CSC treatment of all inmates, as can be seen by reading his Annual Reports. CSC staff tend to be lazy, incompetent, childishly irresponsible and, to conceal the problems they cause by these, habitual liars. There is very little correlation between CSC’s own Annual Reports and reality. There is nothing wrong with the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, nor its Regulations, nor the Commissioner’s Directives that serve (and are ignored) as a field manual for this operation. No question, CSC is good at locking people up, but according to these prescriptive documents, they are supposed to be engaging in rehabilitation, too, especially for the benefit of the rest of us, and they don’t (they pretend to, but don’t), because in this absolute, closed system, they don’t have to. Aboriginal, and all other Canadians, are very badly served by the Correctional Service of Canada.

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