Written By: Pashmina Rupani
Regarded as “21st century residential schools”, Canadian prisons incarcerate a disproportionate and alarming number of Indigenous people, which places a significant financial burden on the Canadian economy (1).
Despite accounting for only 5% of Canadians, Indigenous inmates comprise over 30% of our federal prison population, and Indigenous women comprise nearly 50% of female inmates (2; 11). While the number of non-Indigenous inmates is steadily decreasing, Indigenous incarceration rates are trending in the wrong direction, year after year.
