Risky Justice of the Law: The Impact of Risk-Assessment Tools on Aboriginal Offenders’ Overrepresentation in Canada's Federal Prisons
| Author | Reza Barmaki |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00328855221139866 |
| Published date | 01 January 2023 |
| Date | 01 January 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Risky Justice of the Law:
The Impact of Risk-
Assessment Tools on
Aboriginal Offenders’
Overrepresentation in
Canada’s Federal Prisons
Reza Barmaki
Abstract
Official narratives have often blamed the Aboriginal peoples of Canada for their
over-representation in Canada’s federal prisons. This article argues that the prob-
lem is partially due to the problematic design and application of risk-assessment
tools that have produced dubious results for Aboriginal offenders. This, in turn,
has resulted in a vicious circle, beginning with labeling Aboriginal offenders as
high-security risk offenders, followed by the lowering of their chances of getting
paroled, and ending in their long-term stays in federal prisons. This last stage, in
turn, becomes justification for the other two. And so continues the circle.
Keywords
risk assessment, aboriginal, federal prison, overrepresentation, justice
Introduction
Canada is a federation of 10 provinces and three territories (Northwest
Territories, Nunavut, and Yukon). Its capital city is Ottawa, and its biggest
city is Toronto. Both cities are located in the province of Ontario, which is
York University, Toronto, ON, Canada
Corresponding Author:
Reza Barmaki, Department of Social Science, York University, Ross Building South, Room 737,
4700 Keele Street, Toronto, ON M3J 1P3, Canada.
Email: Barmaki@yorku.ca
Article
The Prison Journal
2023, Vol. 103(1) 68–90
© 2022 SAGE Publications
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/00328855221139866
journals.sagepub.com/home/tpj
the most important province in Canada. Despite its large size (about 10
million square kilometers), Canada’s population is rather small: about 38
million. Canada is an immigration-based, multicultural country that houses
many ethnic groups from around the world. However, it also has a native pop-
ulation that is referred to as Indigenous or Aboriginal peoples, who are com-
posed of three main groups: Métis (mixed European and Indigenous
ancestry), First Nations (50 nations), and Inuit. Altogether, they make up
about 5% of Canada’s population, and the provinces of Manitoba and
Saskatchewan have the largest proportion of Aboriginal peoples at, respec-
tively, 18.0% and 16.3%. Nunavut has the highest proportion of Aboriginal
peoples in its population (85.9%), followed by the Northwest Territories
(50.7%), and Yukon (23.3%) (Statistics Canada, 2020).
International statistics “show that the percentage of indigenous people in
conflict with the justice system is extreme, and in many places, those
numbers may be on the rise”(Gorelick, 2020). Canada has not been an excep-
tion to this trend. Similar to Indigenous populations in the United States,
Australia, and New Zealand, for example, Aboriginal peoples of Canada
have continuously been over-represented in the Canadian correctional
system for the past several decades (Reid, 2017). This applies to all categories
of Canada’s Aboriginal offenders: male and female, youth and adult, and has
been well-known to Canada’s correctional scholars and practitioners since the
1960s (Cattarinich, 1996). However, it was first officially recognized in
Sentencing, a report published in 1984 by the Government of Canada, and
authorities have been trying to find remedies since the early 1990s. In
1999, the Supreme Court of Canada characterized this overrepresentation
as “a crisis in the Canadian criminal justice system”(R. v. Gladue [1999] 1
S.C.R. 688). The extent and persistence of the problem have even been
noticed by the United Nations, which has pointed to “disproportionately
high rate of incarceration of indigenous people, including women, in
federal and provincial prisons across Canada.”(The United Nations, 2015).
Nevertheless, since the early 1990s, many have rejected the official narratives
that have often blamed Aboriginals themselves for this issue. Time and again,
such narratives have pointed to such factors as their high rate of substance
abuse to their over-incarceration. However, many in the scholarly community
and the media have increasingly pointed to “colonial structures”(Arbel, 2020,
p. 439) or “institutional racism”(APTN, 2020), for example, as key causes. A
major Canadian news agency recently branded Canada’s correctional system
bluntly as a system that has been “stacked against”Aboriginal inmates (The
Globe and Mail, 2020).
The problem has especially been noticeable in Canada’s federal prisons
(CSC, 2019a). Canada has a two-tiered correctional system for adults:
Barmaki 69
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