Indigenous federal admissions and releases: 2013-14 to 2018-19

Research Highlights: Increasing representation of Indigenous offenders in federal custody can be attributed to more newly sentenced admissions.

Over the past five years, there has been an increase (+1,067 or 22%) in the number of Indigenous offenders under federal jurisdiction [from 4,847 at year-end in 2013-14 to 5,914 in 2018-19]. While the representation of Indigenous offenders in federal custody has changed from 23% at year-end 2013-14 to 29% in 2018-19, there has also been steady growth in the conditional release supervision population [from 17% at year-end in 2013-14 to 19% in 2018-19]. A fuller understanding of the sources for growth can facilitate the effective allocation of resources.

Historical year-end institutional and community supervision counts and profiles for all federal offenders are recorded as standardized reports in CSC’s Corporate Reporting System-Modernized (CRS-M). Similarly, historical counts of federal admissions and releases are also recorded in CRS-M. Data was extracted from CRS-M (June 15, 2019) movement module to establish a five-year trend (2013-14 to 2018-19) of the flows in and out of federal custody.

As reflected in the following table, new admissions to federal custody for Indigenous offenders have risen from 1,218 in 2013-14 to 1,350 in 2018-19; a substantial difference of +132 (or +11.0%). Unpacking new admissions by administrative region, it is notable that there has been a decline in the Atlantic, Quebec and Pacific regions. However, in Ontario and Prairies there has been an increase. Moreover, for the Prairies region there has been an increase from 699 in 2013-14 to 868 in 2018-19, accounting for nearly two-thirds (64%) of all new Indigenous admissions to federal custody.

Importantly, Indigenous federal re-admissions due to revocation of conditional release have declined as well.

With respect to Indigenous population flows out of custody, discretionary releases being granted by the Parole Board of Canada have almost doubled (by 94%) since 2013-14. Also noteworthy, the Prairie region accounts for nearly two-thirds of this type of release. Notwithstanding the aforementioned, non-discretionary release for Indigenous offenders appears to have declined Service-wide.

The finding that new admissions of Indigenous offenders to federal custody continue to exceed the rate of discretionary release points to the need for improved upstream criminal justice system interventions.

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Prepared by: Larry Motiuk