Incarceration of Aboriginal people in adult correctional services

In 2007/2008, Aboriginal adults accounted for 22% of admissions to sentenced custody, while representing 3% of the Canadian population.
Age, level of education, and employment status can only partially explain the representation of Aboriginal adults incarcerated in Canadian prisons, according to a new study that used data from the Integrated Correctional Service Survey and the 2006 Census to analyze factors that could be contributing to the representation of Aboriginal adults in custody.
    The provincial incarceration rate for Aboriginal adults in the jurisdictions studied was higher than the rate for non-Aboriginal adults. The gap in the incarceration rates for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal adults narrowed when age was considered, but Aboriginal adults continued to have consistently higher rates across all age groupings.
    Analysis based on available data for Saskatchewan and Alberta showed that young adults without a high school diploma and without a job had the highest rates of incarceration.
    For both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people aged 20 to 34, incarceration rates declined as the education and employment situation improved. However, the decreases were greater for non-Aboriginal young adults.
    When comparing persons of similar employment status and education level, the ratio between incarceration rates for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal young adults in Saskatchewan and Alberta decreased by about half.
    The analysis suggests that other factors, such as income, housing and rehabilitative needs, may be involved in the representation of Aboriginal offenders in custody.
    From \he Juristat article "The incarceration of Aboriginal people in adult correctional services", Vol. 29, no. 3 (85-002-X, free),

Incarceration rate increases
for first time in decade
Rising numbers in remand, awaiting trial, produced Canada’s first increate in incarceration rates in 10 years. Federal and provincial jails held 2% more in 2007/2008 than were in custody in the previous year.
            The average number of adults held in remand increased by 8% in 2007/2008 to 12,888. The number has been rising since the mid-1980s.
            According to a report of the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, on any given day in 2007/2008, an average of 38,348 inmates. This number includes:
           36,330 adults.
           2,018 youth aged 12 to 17 years
       The rate of custody was 117 people for every 100,000 population, one of the highest in the world. Swede, for example, had a rate of 74 per 100, 000. (The rate for the United States was 762)

Manitoba leads homocide rates Manitoba police reported 62 homicides last year, 23 more than in 2006, giving the province its highest rate since data were first available in 1961, according to the Centre for Justice Statistics. Most of the increase occurred in small urban and rural areas of the province. Homicide statistics are considered the most reliable figures compiled by police.
                  Canada's homicide rate continued on a general downward trend since the mid-1970s with a further 3% decline in 2007.
                  The western provinces and the territories have consistently reported the highest homicide rates in the country.
Columbia. Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador continued to report the lowest rates.
                  According to police reports 594 homicides occurred in Canada in 2007, 12 fewer than in 2006.Stabbings accounted for one-third of the homicides in 2007; \another third involved the use of a firearm.Someone known to the victim, spouses leading the list, committed 85% of all the homicides. Police reported that one in five homicides were gang-related.
"Homicide in Canada, 2007," is available on line

“Mr. Harper has it all wrong” says a statement by six social worker organizations. “This Conservative government orientation is based on prejudices and shows the Conservative leader’s complete lack of knowledge concerning youth and the fight against crime.”
           The joint statement denounces the Harper’s government decision make sentences much heavier for young offenders, to the point of giving 14-year-old murderers a life sentence in prison.
            They point out that:
•    Crime is not rising: in fact, since 1991, the crime rate has been dropping continuously.
•    Rehabilitation and support for young offenders achieve better results than repression. In Quebec, for example, where social services and the government apply this approach, there is two times less juvenile crime than the average for the rest of Canada.
•    Throwing 14-year-old children in prison with adults is tantamount to throwing them into the laps of hardened criminals with all the inherent risks to young people themselves and to the society where they will eventually return.
     They that the country where the repressive approach is most popular, the United States, has the highest crime rate of all industrialized countries.
    The six organizations participating in the statement include: Canadian Association for Social Work Education, the Canadian Association of Social Workers, Newfoundland and Labrador ASW, Alberta New Brunswick ASW, Nova Scotia ASW and l’Ordre professionnel des travailleurs sociaux du Québec.
www.casw-acts.ca

Zero tolerance for drugs in federal
corrections set, critics disagree
Minister of Public Safety Stockwell Day announced a zero tolerance policy for drugs in federal correctional institutions." Illicit drugs in federal prisons compromise the safety and security of correctional staff as well as our communities," said Minister Day. "Drugs undermine the success of our rehabilitation programs and increase offender recidivism rates.
           This prison anti-drug policy will:
•    Expand significantly the drug detector dog program at all federal prisons;
•    Increase security intelligence capacity in institutions and the surrounding communities;
§         Purchase new ION scanners, X-Ray machines and other security equipment for maximum and medium-security federal prisons;
§         Enhance perimeter security around institutions as well as technology support;
§         Implement a scheduled visits policy and better identify and control drug entry points into federal prisons;
§         Introduce a new zero tolerance drug searching policy at federal prisons; and,
§         Protect children from being used to traffic drugs into institutions.
        John Howard Society Executive Director Craig Jones, told the Canadian Press that the government has failed to make the connection between their inability to deal with drugs outside prison and the environment inside prisons.
       He said the majority of drug users in prison are addicted when they enter. “We're going to have a drug problem in prisons for as long as we persist in pursuing an unworkable drug-control strategy outside prisons,” Mr. Jones said.
        “It's a fallacy to think that we can successfully make prisons drug-free when 100 years of drug prohibition has not made Canadian society drug-free.”
        Harassing visitors will only make it harder for inmates to stay in touch with families, increasing the level of tension inside prisons, Jones said.

New Zealand’s parole board head sees Canada as a model of rehabilitation.Former Chief District Court Judge David Caruthers told the New Zealand Herald, that he especially admires the system of halfway houses for ex-prisoners. He has visited the Canadian system and reported back to the Corrections Department.
    He believes that the Canadian a system, if adopted in New Zealand, could cut re-offending rates to five or six times below current levels” and that Canada was ”five or six times more successful than New Zealand.
    ”He recommends that NZ copy the Canadian system with one qualification: non-profit organization rather than the government should operate the houses.
    New Zealand does not have comparable halfway houses with 24-hour, live-in supervision, except for three specialist houses in Hamilton, New Plymouth and Christchurch. The Corrections Department annual report shows that 42 per cent of people leaving prison in 2005-06 re-offended within a year, and 55 per cent within two years.

Harper prefers former police and
corrections officers for parole board
The Harper government prefers former police and corrections officers as appointees to the National Parole Board, the Canadian Press reports.

Since the government took office in 2006, Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day named 36 new members to the board. Twenty-three are retired police officers or former federal and provincial corrections staff. Day's appointment of police officers and correctional service personnel to the parole board far surpasses the number named by his Liberal predecessor Anne McLellan.

Critics suggest that the government is extending a get-tough justice ideology into corrections and rehabilitation. "This is, by wide agreement, the most ideological government that anybody can remember and very, very consistent in their application of their ideology and their disregard of the evidence for what works in corrections," said Craig Jones, Executive Director of the John Howard Society of Canada.

However, some of Day's appointees have experience in rehabilitation and an education in criminology, including the former director of a Correctional Service of Canada sex offender program in Ontario, a victims' rights adviser, a B.C. parole officer who worked with an aboriginal rehabilitation program and specialists in family violence.

The parole board has 32 full-time members and 35 part-time members, Appointments are made by the federal cabinet on the recommendation of the Public Safety minister.

The Youth Criminal Justice Act, passed in April 2003, has succeeded in its goals in diverting young offenders away and decreasing the use of custody, the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics reports. The report creates a problem for the Harper government that is seeking ways to toughen the Act.
    The YCJA was introduced because the predecessor Young Offender Act was considered to overuse the courts and sentences to custody.
The youth court caseload has declined in every province and territory since the introduction of the YCJA. In five jurisdictions, the caseload in 2006/2007:
• was at least 30% lower than in 2002/2003 — the Northwest Territories (-52%), Newfoundland and Labrador (-47%), Yukon (-45%), British Columbia (-37%) and Ontario (-30%);
• was 21% to 24% lower — Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, Alberta and Nunavut; and
• declined by less than 20% — Nova Scotia, Quebec, Manitoba and Saskatchewan.
    Fewer youth are being sentenced to custody. In 2006/2007, about 17% or 5,640 of all guilty cases resulted in a custodial sentence. This compares with 13,246 or 27% of all guilty cases in 2002/2003. This drop may be due in part to the fact that under the YCJA, youth are subject to a period of mandatory community supervision following their release from custody.
    The YCJA introduced a number of sentencing options for judges including: intensive support and supervision orders, deferred custody and supervision orders, and orders to attend a non-residential program. In 2006/2007, deferred custody and supervision orders were handed down the most frequently in only about 3% of guilty youth court cases, or 1,080.

Incarceration of Aboriginal people in adult correctional services

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