Annual report: 2015 – 2016

I recommend that CSC’s National Aboriginal Advisory Council (NAAC) review gaps and barriers to increased participation of Elders in federal corrections and publicly release its recommendations by the end of the fiscal year.

Annual Report: 2016 – 2017

I recommend that CSC review its community release strategy for Indigenous offenders with a view to:

1. increase the number of Section 81 agreements to include community accommodation options for the care and custody of medium security inmates;
2. address discrepancies in funding arrangements between CSC and Aboriginal-managed Healing Lodge facilities, and;
3. maximize community interest and engagement in release planning for Indigenous offenders at the earliest opportunity.

Annual report: 2017 – 2018

It has been nearly three years since the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) issued its final report Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future (December 18, 2015), to which the Government of Canada committed to implementing all of the recommendations. Little practical progress has been made on the TRC’s ‘Calls to Action’ impacting federal corrections:

• Eliminate the over-representation of Aboriginal people and youth in custody over the next decade
• Implement community sanctions that will provide realistic alternatives to imprisonment for Aboriginal offenders and respond to the underlying causes of offending.
• Eliminate barriers to the creation of additional Aboriginal healing lodges within the federal correctional system.
• Enact statutory exemptions from mandatory minimum sentences of imprisonment for offenders affected by Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD).
• Reduce the rate of criminal victimization of Aboriginal people.

The Correctional Services Investigator recommendations include the following specific to Indigenous populations:

1. that CSC creates and appoints a Deputy Commissioner level position for Indigenous Affairs to ensure that corporate attention and accountability remains focused on Indigenous issues in federal corrections.
2. that CSC re-allocate very significant resources to negotiate new funding arrangements and agreements with appropriate partners and service providers to transfer care, custody and supervision of Indigenous people from prison to the community. This would include creation of new section 81 capacity in urban areas and section 84 placements in private residences. These new arrangements should return to the original vision of the Healing Lodges and include consultation with Elders. To honour the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s ‘calls to action,’
3. that CSC spending, budget and resource allocation should better reflect the proportion of Indigenous people serving a federal sentence. Over the next decade, re-allocation of resources and delegation of control to Indigenous communities should be the stated goals of CSC’s contribution to reaching the TRC’s ‘calls to action.’
4. that the CSC develop a National Gang and Dis-Affiliation Strategy and ensure sufficient resources are allocated for its implementation, inclusive of (core and cultural) programs, employment and services. Special attention should be paid to Indigenous-based street gangs. This strategy should:
   • be responsive to the unique needs of young Indigenous men and women offenders, including education and meaningful vocational opportunities;
   • ensure that non-gang affiliated young adult offenders are not placed where there are gang members who may attempt to recruit or intimidate them;
   • facilitate opportunities (e.g. workshops, seminars, public speakers, etc.) where young adults can engage with their culture and/or spirituality, and age-specific activities;
   • incorporate best practices and lessons learned from other jurisdictions and other public safety domain

http://www.oci-bec.gc.ca/cnt/rpt/pdf/annrpt/annrpt20172018-eng.pdf

Annual Report 2018 – 2019

Feb. 18, 2020 – Annual report tabled in House of Commons. The following are ten key recommendations common between two parliamentary committees (the House of Commons Standing Committees on Public Safety and National Security [SECU] and Status of Women [FEWO]) as well as recommendations my Office has made, and continues to call on federal corrections to implement:

1. Increasing the number of Section 81 and 84 agreements and the ability of Indigenous inmates to access Healing Lodges.
2. Validating existing risk assessment and classification tools and/or developing new tools that are more relevant to the realities of Indigenous peoples in the correctional system.
3. Increasing access and availability of culturally-relevant correctional programming for Indigenous peoples.
4. Increasing the number of Indigenous staff and providing training on Gladue and Aboriginal Social History to all staff to increase cultural competence, as well as enhance the relevance and effectiveness of services for Indigenous inmates.
5. Improving and increasing engagement with Indigenous communities to provide reintegration services for Indigenous offenders being released back to the community.
6. Increasing the availability of appropriate and relevant employment and educational programming and training that is informed by labour market needs.
7. Improving screening, assessment and diagnosis of mental health issues, specifically Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder.
8. Providing trauma-informed therapeutic approaches to programming and interventions, particularly for Indigenous women.
9. Facilitating access to appropriate identification and health cards to all Indigenous offenders prior to their release.
10. Appointing a deputy commissioner for Indigenous affairs within federal corrections.

Annual Report: 2019 – 2020

I recognize that many of the causes of Indigenous over-representation reside in factors beyond the criminal justice system. However, when I issued the statement, I noted that consistently poorer correctional outcomes for Indigenous offenders (e.g.)

• more likely to be placed or classified as maximum security
• more likely to be involved in use of force and self-injury incidents,
• less likely to be granted conditional release

suggests that federal corrections makes its own contribution to the problem of over-representation. For example, a recent national recidivism study shows that Indigenous people reoffend or are returned to custody at much higher levels, as high as 65% for Indigenous men in the Prairie region within five years of release. A higher rate of readmission to custody (revocations or reoffending) suggests shortcomings in the system’s capacity to prepare and assist Indigenous offenders to live a law- abiding life after release from custody.

In the coming year, my Office will be launching a series of in-depth investigations examining
a selection of programs and services in CSC’s Indigenous Continuum of Care. The Office’s review of Indigenous Corrections will also include a deeper probe of the over-involvement of Indigenous offenders in use of force incidents including comparative data and findings on the causes, frequency, type and severity of force used. Preliminary and previous work in this area (e.g. An Investigation of the Treatment and Management of Chronic Self-Injury among Federally Sentenced Women, September 2013) suggests that specific attention needs to be paid to the circumstances and social histories of Indigenous women, particularly those who present with serious mental health issues, as they appear to be vastly over-represented in use of force incidents among federally sentenced women.

Annual Report: 2020-2021

Recommendations:

• I recommend that the Minister of Public Safety engage the Public Health Agency of Canada to conduct an independent epidemiological study of the differential rates of COVID-19 infection and spread in Canadian federal prisons and report results and recommendations publicly. 

(Indigenous individuals accounted for close to 60% of all positive COVID-19 cases in federal prisons in period November 2020 through Feb. 2021) 

• I recommend that CSC promptly develop an action plan in consultation with stakeholders to address the relationship between use-of-force and systemic racism against Indigenous and Black individuals and publicly report on actionable changes to policy and practice that will effectively reduce the over-representation of these groups among those exposed to uses of force. # 7
• I recommend that CSC conduct an independent in-depth study of its Women Offender Correctional Program (WOCP) and Indigenous Women Offender Correctional Program (IWOCP) to better understand why the programs have been deficient in producing improved correctional outcomes for participants, particularly for Indigenous women. # 9
• I recommend that CSC return to the basic principles identified in Creating Choices and develop a long-term strategy to ensure that all women are prepared at their earliest date possible to return to the community and that significant resources be reallocated to the community supervision program and community correctional programming to support women back in the community. # 11

Recommendations based on suicide of an Indigenous inmate:

• I recommend that CSC’s team of national investigators within the Incident Investigations Branch (IIB) be comprehensively trained in the principles and practices of Gladue analysis and Gladue report writing (Indigenous social history). Further, National Boards of Investigation into a person of Indigenous ancestry should be principally led, investigated, and written from an Indigenous social history perspective. (#16)
• I recommend that a Gladue-informed summary of M’s case be prepared and used as a national training and learning tool for all CSC staff. In the interests of transparency and accountability, any documentation prepared to meet my recommendations in this case should be made public. (#17)
• I recommend that CSC discontinue the practice of labeling non-suicidal self-injurious behaviour in prison settings as “instrumental,” “willful,” or “deliberate” in nature or intent. A comprehensive mental health assessment of self-injurious and suicidal persons should be completed, and clear guidance provided to front line staff in how to manage and de-escalate incidents of self-injurious and suicidal behaviour. (#18)
• I recommend that the Commissioner proactively issue a formal apology to M’s family for the systemic failures of Correctional Service Canada. (#19)