Overrepresentation of Indigenous Women in Canada’s Penal System

Nov 21

Nov 21 Overrepresentation of Indigenous Women in Canada’s Penal System

As of May 2022, Indigenous women account for 50 percent of incarcerated females in Canada, despite making up only four percent of the total population. Although a deeply unsettling statistic, this should come as no surprise. Canada, although often lauded as a staunch proponent and defender of human rights on the global stage, is a settler-colonial state that has waged continued and oppressive violence against its Indigenous population. From the Indian Act, to the residential school system, the forced sterilization of Indigenous women, the Sixties Scoop, the overrepresentation of Indigenous women in the foster care system, and most recently the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls epidemic, Canada’s violence towards the Indigenous population reflects anything but a strong moral conscious for human rights. The alarming rates of overrepresentation of Indigenous women in the criminal justice system is just one manifestation of the country’s systemic colonial violence.

The gross mistreatment of Canada’s Indigenous population, which has recently been acknowledged as constituting a genocide, has been largely neglected by government and media, despite growing calls for acknowledgment of the varied injustices. Although there’s been greater attention to the issues in the last decade or so (especially with the election of the liberal government in 2015), such as the establishment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG), the government has largely failed to provide any adequate resolution to the continued violence waged against the country’s Indigenous population. This reality is similar among other settler-colonial states, such as the United States, Australia, and New Zealand, where treatment of the countries’ Indigenous populations is often concealed and overlooked.

Further, critics of the Canadian government have specifically accused them of ‘talking the talk but not walking the walk’, especially in regards to implementation of the 94 Calls to Action from the TRC and the 231 Calls for Justice from the MMIWG National Inquiry. Included in both these reports is acknowledgment of the vast overrepresentation of Indigenous communities in Canada’s criminal justice system. However, progress on both initiatives has been remarkably slow, with only 13 of the 94 Calls to Action having been completed since the commission was initially published in 2015. The Calls for Justice has seen even slower progress, with only two of the 231 receiving a completion status, and less than half being started.

This inattention to providing meaningful change is particularly evident in the current over incarceration crisis of Indigenous women, who account for half of total female inmates. Canada’s criminal ‘justice’ system, has become another instrument in the settler-colonial apparatus, used as a means to subjugate the most oppressed populations. Prisons, despite being a largely ineffective system that is inherently biased and violent, are a widely accepted and normalized practice. Although perceptions of the prison systems and their potential efficacy have exhibited slight change over the years, especially in the wake of Black Lives Matter and police brutality in the United States, they are still recognized as a typical structure to ensure community safety and law and order. Estimates say that some 11.5 million people are held in penal institutions throughout the world, and in many parts of the world incarceration rates are rising, and rapidly. South America alone has seen an increase in their incarceration rates of over 200 percent since 2000, while Southeast Asia and Oceania have exhibited increases of 116 percent and 82 percent, respectively. Although there was a decline in the aftermath of COVID-19, major concerns were raised over questions of adequate attention to overcrowding and health conditions. In short, the use of prisons as systems is widespread. As inherently violent structures, exhibiting varied displays of human rights violations, this should be seen as a cause of concern.

Even more alarming is how criminal justice systems disproportionately affect marginalized groups, as can be seen in the case of Indigenous women in Canada. Their growing over-incarceration has been recognized as a crisis by the UN Committee against torture and the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women, who noted the current situation is alarming. The Correctional Service of Canada (COS) has claimed to have undertaken several initiatives to address the issues, such as healing lodges which are meant to provide culturally sensitive services to Indigenous offenders, and policy initiatives, such as provisions that direct judges to consider a person’s Indigenous background during sentencing. However, critics have argued that the government is not doing enough, and that these efforts are largely futile as the issue continues to persist. Advocates for Canada’s Indigenous population argue that the issue of overrepresentation in the criminal justice system must be understood in the context of settler-colonialism, and to ignore this would be to neglect the structural violence that foregrounds this high likelihood of incarceration. Incarceration rates are not the only place where Indigenous women are disproportionately implicated in the criminal justice system; they are also more likely to be involved in an incident where prison staff made use of force, more likely to be in a maximum-security prison, more likely to be affiliated with a security threat group, are incarcerated for a higher portion of their sentences, have high rates of revoked parole status, and are more likely to self-injury and are overrepresented in prison suicides.

Further, reports indicate that 97 percent of federally incarcerated Indigenous women were diagnosed with a mental health disorder, and 92 percent were found to have moderate to high substance abuse issues. The Final Report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada have both noted the significant legacies of intergenerational trauma and systemic violence in the over-incarceration of the Indigenous population, specifically how it is associated with higher rates of violence and substance abuse, resulting in higher incarceration rates. The Native Women’s Association of Canada, a national Indigenous organization which seeks to emphasize the political voices of Indigenous women, girls, and gender-diverse peoples in Canada has stressed the need for transformative justice and restoration measures. They note that without fundamental changes to the criminal justice system, this crisis will largely go unchecked. They further underscore the need for alternatives to incarceration, such as the prioritization of community-based alternatives to facilitate healing and rehabilitation.

However, without proper acknowledgement of Canada’s role as a settler-colonial state, and the ways in which carceral spaces become implicated in colonial practices, it is unlikely that any meaningful change will be made. Root causes of structural violence and discrimination must first be addressed for there to be any hope of resolving Indigenous women’s over-incarceration, and the current laboured and ineffective efforts displayed by the government can provide no positive expectations.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the wider St. Andrews Foreign Affairs Review team.