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“The Canadian justice system works against Indigenous people at every level, from police checks and arrests to bail denial and detention, sentencing miscarriages and disparities and high incarceration rates.
These trends are also well-documented in countries like the United States, Australia and New Zealand. It is clear that the problem lies in our justice systems.
Around the time that Canada started receding its formal “Indian assimilation” policies in the 1950s, including the end of the residential school requirement, penitentiary and child welfare systems started to quietly assume a new role in the lives of Indigenous people.
In fact, prior to the 1960s, Indigenous people only represented one to two per cent of the federal prison population. The rates have consistently increased every year since.
The Office of the Correctional Investigator reports the incarceration rate of Indigenous people is now at 26.4 per cent of the federal prison population, while they comprise only four per cent of the Canadian population. Incidentally, the Canadian crime rate has fallen in the last 20 years.
Not only are Indigenous people more likely to be imprisoned, but they are also more often subjected to some of the most restrictive levels of punishment, including segregation, forced interventions, higher security classifications, involuntary transfers, physical restraints and self-harm.”
– The Conversation, Broken system: Why is a quarter of Canada’s prison population Indigenous?.
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Download the 18″x24″ poster (.pdf), Indian Country 52 #9 – Broken System (Mass Incarceration).
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Indian Country 52
Indian Country 52 is a weekly project by David Bernie that uses the medium of posters that promote issues and stories in Indian Country.
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This work by David Bernie is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. You may download, share, and post the images under the condition that the works are attributed to the artist.
