Indigenous, Black people overrepresented in federal custody in N.S.: StatsCan

Indigenous and Black adults are several times more likely to be incarcerated than non-Indigenous and white adults in Nova Scotia, according to data from Statistics Canada.

A report released Wednesday shows incarceration rates in federal and provincial corrections systems for 2023-24. The new data, based on the agency’s “overrepresentation index,” shows that Indigenous adults were imprisoned at a rate 10 times higher than non-Indigenous adults in six provinces with available data, which include Nova Scotia.

The Black population was incarcerated at a rate three times higher than the white population in four provinces with data available on Black prisoners, including Nova Scotia.

“There is way overrepresentation of Black and Indigenous folks in our judicial system … because the people putting them away don’t look like them,” said Renford Farrier, co-chair of the East Coast Prison Justice Society.

Statistics Canada said in a release on Wednesday that in the five years from 2019 to 2024, overrepresentation of Indigenous people in custody increased each year, while overrepresentation of Black people was consistent.

The report shows that in 2023-24 in Nova Scotia, the incarceration rate for Indigenous people was 3.2 times higher than that of non-Indigenous people.

In the same year, the incarceration rate for Black people was 44 per 10,000 people in the province, and 10 white people per 10,000.

The Statistics Canada release says that the overrepresentation of Indigenous and Black people in the correctional system in Canada is a “long-standing and deeply rooted issue.”

Some of the causes of overrepresentation of Indigenous and Black people in Canada’s correctional system include colonialism, socio-economic marginalization, systemic discrimination and intergenerational trauma, Statistics Canada wrote.

'We're there like cattle'

Farrier, who also works with the John Howard Society of Nova Scotia, was convicted for second-degree murder in 1992 when he was 20 years old and spent more than three decades in federal prisons across the country, including the Springhill Institution in Nova Scotia.

He said in an interview with CBC News that racialized people who go through the correctional system immediately face stereotyping and a lack of empathy that keeps them in custody longer than their white counterparts.

“It’s not even that we’re set up to fail. It’s we’re going to fail,” Farrier added. “There’s nothing to assist us. We’re there like cattle.”

Nova Scotia was the only province in the report where Black women were substantially more likely to be incarcerated than white women, with an overrepresentation index of 3.5. The number was also 3.5 for Black men.

The province's overrepresentation index for Indigenous women was at 4.6, and for Indigenous men it was 3.1.

The numbers aren't surprising to Emma Halpern, the executive director of the Elizabeth Fry Society of Mainland Nova Scotia.

In an interview with Mainstreet Nova Scotia, she said in recent years, Nova Scotia has made some strides to address overrepresentation, like those meant to streamline the bail system and a policy meant to improve the treatment of Black Nova Scotians in the justice system.

They have not been enough to fix the “massive societal problem” that has caused the overrepresentation in the first place, Halpern said.

“We have to see that connection between the ways in which people who fall through the cracks of our social safety network — who are harmed by things like colonization — end up being highly overrepresented in our criminal justice system," she said.

“We are really failing Indigenous women, failing Indigenous people, we're failing Black people."

Next steps

In Farrier’s opinion, real change to the system could start with more progressive action at the level of the Correctional Services of Canada.

“The commission is usually ‘lock 'em up’-minded,” Farrier said. “We need to start putting up … people with culture, people with [different] backgrounds, not just white privilege.”

He added that at the prison level those that manage the institutions should work with those who are inmates to improve those relationships and foster a sense of respect.

MORE TOP STORIES