VANCOUVER — A newly released report by Statistics Canada says Indigenous adults were incarcerated at a rate 10 times higher than non-Indigenous adults in six provinces.
It says its new measure, called the overrepresentation index, was used to make the finding for First Nations, Inuit and Métis people in British Columbia, P.E.I., Nova Scotia, Ontario, Saskatchewan and Alberta in 2023/2024.
The report says Indigenous people made up 33.2 per cent of the custodial population in those provinces despite only making up 4.3 per cent of the overall adult population of those regions.
Indigenous adults were incarcerated at a rate of 89 per 10,000 population on an average day, compared with eight per 10,000 among non-Indigenous adults.
It also notes 2.6 per cent of the Indigenous adult population was incarcerated at some point during the 2023/2024 year — and that rate more than doubled to 7.3 per cent among Indigenous men aged 35 to 44.
The report says the Black population was incarcerated at a rate three times the white population in Nova Scotia, Ontario, Alberta and B.C., noting Black people accounted for about 13 per cent of the custodial population on an average day in those provinces despite making up only 3.3 per cent of the general adult population.
Statistics Canada calls the overrepresentation of Indigenous and Black adults in Canada’s corrections system “a significant and persistent concern.”
The agency says the Black population faces “social and economic challenges linked to the historic and ongoing harms caused by colonial laws, policies and practices, including racial segregation and discriminatory immigration policies.”
“These challenges, compounded by anti-Black racism and systemic discrimination, have resulted in the overrepresentation of Black persons in Canada’s correctional system,” it says in the posting on Wednesday.
Meanwhile the agency says the overrepresentation of Indigenous people is attributable to “complex and interconnected though indisputably linked to colonialism, displacement, socioeconomic marginalization, intergenerational trauma and systemic discrimination.”
“The overrepresentation of Indigenous people in Canada’s correctional systems is a long-standing and deeply rooted issue,” Statistics Canada says.
The report says that overrepresentation was greater for women than men. It says researchers also determined that, over the five-year period between 2019 and 2024, overrepresentation of Indigenous adults in custody increased each year.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 14, 2025.
The Canadian Press
