Native Canadians in the Prison

Native Canadians in the Prison System

The history of the Western world is shamefully inebriated with gross injustices towards the native populations of colonized countries. Today, this is perhaps nowhere more evident than in the prison systems of these same countries, where the populations are disproportionately represented by native inhabitants. This is no less true in Canada, where the population known as the country's "First Nations" make up a large amount of the prison population in the country's penal system. A number of reasons can be identified for this, among which is a combination of demographic factors and prevailing prejudice.

Currently, aboriginal peoples in Canada constitute less than 3% of the total population in the country (the History of Canada Online, n.d.). However, the total proportion of this population in the prison population amounts to approximately 40%. Because of the disparity of these numbers, various research efforts have been launched to determine the reasons for this phenomenon.

There are two divergent findings regarding this. One camp argues that poverty, unemployment and a lack of education drives the native populations of Canada to criminal activities resulting in their disproportionate incarceration. Others, in turn argue that there is an inherent racist attitude within the Canadian justice system, which results in more convictions for aboriginal felons than for others convicted of the same crimes. A third argument might hold that racism in society leads to the very poverty, unemployment and lack of education that leads to the higher prison population within this population. Indeed, racism has a cumulative effect when it comes to the social ills that affect native Canadian populations.

Indeed, one argument is that social ills such as alcoholism in aboriginal communities are driven by the oppression that these communities have suffered for years, and in turn drive their desperate attempts to survive by whichever means possible, whether legal or illegal. Hence, the higher prison sentences for these populations.

The Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP) was established in 1991 to investigate the issues faced by the Canadian First Nations in terms of both their social lives and justice issues. This entity also found that the Canadian First Nations have been disproportionally represented, and concluded that the justice system has "failed" these people (Office of the Correctional Investigator, 2010). RCAP also found a particular overrepresentation of Aboriginal women in the criminal justice system, while the general federally incarcerated population in the country declined by 12.5% from 1996 to 2004. For the same period, First Nations representatives in the system increased by 21.7%.

Factors that influence this population include not only discrimination and racial or cultural prejudice, but also economic and social deprivation that tend to lead to substance abuse and violence across generations, as mentioned above.