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Crime and punishment in Saskatchewan

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It's a given of politically correct orthodoxy, a shibboleth of the modern liberal canon, that aboriginal Canadians are "over-represented" in our criminal justice system and prisons. But as several writers demonstrated on these pages last week in regard to a racial-profiling study conducted by the Kingston, Ont. police, claims of systemic discrimination often don't hold up under close scrutiny.

"Over-represented" is a charged phrase, a judgment, a presupposition that discourages further analysis.

The most recent example came Friday from Statistics Canada. In a report entitled Readmission to Saskatchewan correctional services among Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal adults, the state number-cruncher asserted -- in the opening line -- "Aboriginal people are over-represented in Saskatchewan's adult correctional system."

The proof? Between 1999 and 2004, "about 25,000 adults had completed at least one continuous period of supervision in Saskatchewan correctional services. Of these individuals, 57% were aboriginal." Yet only 10% of the province's adult population is native, ergo natives are over-represented.

However, saying aboriginals are "over-represented" suggests there is something unfair about the situation, likely even something racist. In fact, the use of the term in such contexts in inaccurate: It cannot be said that aboriginals are "over-represented" in prisons unless their numbers there are out of proportion to the number of crimes they commit.

Canada-wide, aboriginals represent about 4.4% of the Canadian population. But they account for 18% of federal prisoners and 21% of provincial and territorial ones. In Saskatchewan, the situation is more pronounced: Three-quarters of the prisoners are aboriginal -- more than seven times the proportion of Saskatchewanians who are aboriginal. That's a staggering ratio.

We might lament that such a tiny community is responsible for so much law-breaking. But we can't, accurately, say they were "over-represented" in prison: If natives are responsible for three-quarters of serious Saskatchewan crimes, even at 7.5-to-1 they are not over-represented.

The trouble is, as a May 31 study by the Library of Parliament found, "it is difficult to assess crime rates for Aboriginal people in Canada because there has been unwillingness to collect racial data." [See link to this study below] Just a month ago, another StatsCan report, Collecting Data on Aboriginal People in the Criminal Justice System, acknowledged that "there was no information about the Aboriginal or non-Aboriginal status for almost half of the charged or chargeable suspects in 2003."

And yet, there is no unwillingness to use racial data when it suits the purposes of our social engineers and native lobbyists. There is no reluctance to assert endlessly that natives are being treated unjustly by "white justice," no hesitation to ask for more money to address the "root causes" of native incarceration or to demand more leniency for native convicts and more native cultural programs. There's just a reluctance to collect the figures that would prove conclusively -- one way or the other -- whether natives are actually jailed at a rate disproportionate to their share of crime.

There have been some stabs at an answer. A 2000 StatsCan study on Police-reported Aboriginal crime in Saskatchewan, for instance, found that in those cases where native status had been noted at arrest, "more than one-half (52%) of those accused in Prince Albert, Regina and Saskatoon were Aboriginal." Similarly, a 1994 study, Police Reported Aboriginal Crime in Calgary, Regina and Saskatoon, found natives five times more likely than non-natives to commit a crime in Calgary, 10.5 times more likely in Saskatoon and 12 times in Regina.

While such numbers suggest that aboriginals are hardly "over-represented" in our prisons, some argue that this data simply shows the whole system is racist: Because police forces are rife with systemic discrimination, officers target natives while failing to bring to justice non-aboriginal perpetrators.

Anything to keep a modern liberal myth alive, I guess. But myths should not be applied to impugn the fairness of our justice system and police corps -- as they are in Saskatchewan and other parts of Canada. While natives may be incarcerated at a rate four to five times that of other Canadians, that does not mean racism is afoot.

If we want aboriginals to spend less time in jail, then we should be finding ways to have them commit less crime. But beyond that, it makes no sense to determine who should be in prison and who not on the basis of racial quotas.

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