of Indigenous women who received federal prison sentences increased by 80%. The number of people from visible minority groups who were imprisoned increased by 75%. The number of Black people in prison increased by 90%. Over that same ten year period, the number of white people in prison decreased by 3%. All these statistics are from the Annual Report from the Office of the Correctional Investigator from 2013. The Correctional Investigator is the official Ombudsman for prisoners in the federal prison system.

In that same report from 2013, there is a section on the situation facing Black people who are incarcerated. Black people in prison in Canada make up 9.5% of the total prison population as opposed to 2.9% of the population outside prison. Black prisoners are more likelyCanadian prison system, we’ll share a story. We heard a story of someone who had been in prison since he was a teenager. He has a life sentence. When he was in the process of applying for parole, he (like everyone else) was mandated to do a “psychological assessment”. At the same time, he was applying for recognition of membership in an Indigenous nation. He got his results for the psychological assessment before the government formally recognized his membership. Initially the assessment said that his likelihood to re-offend was 20%. However, once his status was recognized and that status (he is Métis) was included in the assessment, his likelihood to re-offend shot up to 50%. Nothing else had changed, they didn’t redo the assessment. It was simply that