Study: Canada criminal courts stacked against Indigenous accused - Indian Country Today

Indigenous people are overrepresented in Canadian criminal courts

They also commit more crime.

and far more likely than White people to be convicted and locked up once they come before a judge, according to a recent federal government study.

See above

Indigenous people made up 25 percent of all accused in 2016 — that is, one out of every four — despite comprising only 5 percent of the general population

So despite being 5% of the population they are thought to commit 25% of all crime? I just felt myself become more racist

Indigenous people were 33 percent less likely to be acquitted and 14 percent more likely to plead or be found guilty. Then, once convicted, Indigenous offenders were 30 percent more likely to be imprisoned.

And all this despite all the extra considerations natives get.

This “may be an indication of a greater issue surrounding the fair administration of justice,” the researchers said. They concluded the criminal courts are “contributing to differential and disproportionate outcomes for Indigenous people.”

Maybe natives just commit more crime

“These are things that we have known in criminal justice for years—if not decades—and those things have been well documented in past reports,” said Zinger in a phone interview. “It’s just tragic that the overrepresentation continues and has persisted over such a long time.”

Yea just ask anyone near a rez, the rampant criminality of natives sucks

He urged government to act in January 2020 when the proportion of Indigenous people in federal penitentiaries surpassed 30 percent. He said that figure now stands at 32 percent.

lol

The day this number rises by one more percentage point—and fully one in three federal prisoners are Indigenous—is not far away, and Zinger looks forward to it with no anticipation whatsoever.

I mean, if you lock up enough of them surely they'll stop commiting as many crimes right?

Criminologist Vicki Chartrand’s research documents how Canada’s oppressive policies of colonization, segregation and forced assimilation are connected to high Indigenous incarceration rates. This is what the government’s focus on the numbers misses, she said.

It's whitey's fault!

“It shows you the stats but it doesn’t give you the story,” said Chartrand, assistant professor at Bishop’s University. “We need that colonial analysis because racism doesn’t operate outside of a broader systemic framework, so we need to have that understanding of where that racism comes from.”

Google "BIPOC stole my bike!".

“In fact, prison incarceration rates were nil and void up until 1960 when we started seeing the receding of Indigenous segregation policies,” she explained. “The incarceration rate in the federal penitentiaries has only increased every year thereafter, despite all the initiatives at every level of the system.”

No shit? We went from "No one cares about Indians" to "No you can't r*pe your daughter whenever you feel like it"