Why Canada is jailing more Indigenous people despite Trudeau's promises

By Anna Mehler Paperny

SASKATOON (Reuters) - Like a growing number of formerly incarcerated Indigenous people, Marvin Starblanket's life is still governed by Correctional Service Canada rules.

They determine where he sleeps (a halfway house instead of at home with his partner and children), when he clocks in for the night (10 p.m.), whether he drinks alcohol (he is prohibited), and the job he pursues.

The rules did not stop Starblanket, who is 42, from getting a pair of gray-scale tattoos on the backs of his hands: “Good” on the right, in curly script set against bars of heavenly light; and "Evil," against a smokily stylized skull, on the left.

"Who wins?" he muses. "Depends which one you feed."

Starblanket, a member of the Mistawasis First Nation, has led a life shaped by crime and substance use. He's nearing the halfway point of a five-year supervisory order imposed after his most recent prison stint - just under six years for the hold-up of a convenience store with a Taser.

When Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took office a decade ago, he pledged "a total renewal of the relationship between Canada and Indigenous peoples." His Liberal Party committed to implementing recommendations from a government commission, which included eliminating within 10 years the over-representation of Indigenous people in custody. 

With Trudeau due to step down as Liberal leader on Sunday, that overrepresentation has worsened. Indigenous people, who comprise 5% of Canada's population, account for about one-third of federal inmates - compared to just over one-fifth in 2015.

High rates of Indigenous imprisonment are a problem in several Western nations. In the United States, Indigenous people are incarcerated at double the rate of Americans overall, according to the Prison Policy Initiative, a non-profit think tank. In Australia, incarceration rates are 15 times higher for aboriginal peoples.

In Canada, the problem has defied attempts by the Liberal government to address it.

For this story, Reuters spoke to 50 people involved in Canada's criminal justice system - lawyers, advocates, prison staff and former prisoners. They pointed to the imposition of post-release conditions on Indigenous people, a higher rate of parole denials and the use of mandatory minimum sentences, as playing an important part in their rising rates of incarceration.

The sharply higher supervision orders that Reuters is reporting for the first time were four times the rate of increase for white people. 

Previously unreported Correctional Service data, obtained by Reuters through a freedom-of-information request, showed the number of Indigenous people in Canada subject to these strict conditions once they have completed prison sentences rose 53% during the decade ending in 2023-2024. 

Trudeau's office and Canada's justice ministry did not respond to requests for comment. In 2022, Trudeau’s government repealed mandatory minimum sentences for some drug and weapons offenses, though they remain for other crimes.

Long-term supervision orders in Canada are meant to address rare cases of people who pose a risk to the public. Similar measures are used in the United States and United Kingdom, where they are generally used for sex offenders.

Some experts and former prisoners, including Starblanket, recognize there are benefits to such oversight.

"The longer periods of supervision bring with them more resources” such as drug treatment and psychological counselling, said Shabehram Lohrasbe, a doctor who assesses people in the criminal justice system, including those being considered for dangerous or long-term offender designations. But if they breach any of their conditions, or are seen as a risk, "he's back in the can," Lohrasbe said.

'SYSTEMIC RACISM' 

Lawyers and advocates told Reuters that Indigenous people may be seen as riskier because of higher rates of poverty, instability and untreated mental illness and disabilities; they may also be more prone, because of these factors, to build up lengthy rap sheets of less-serious violent offenses.

Indigenous people account for over a third of Canadian prisoners under such supervision orders, 328 out of 959 people, the data showed - slightly above their share of the prison population.

Once released under supervision orders, Indigenous people may struggle to stick to conditions because of “socioeconomic gaps,” such as high rates of unemployment in their communities, homelessness, substance use and past trauma, according to Leonard Marchand, Chief Justice of British Columbia and a member of the Okanagan Indian Band.              

The Correctional Service data showed Indigenous people are overrepresented among those breaching the conditions of long-term supervision orders, putting them at greater risk of returning to jail. The bar for reincarceration is low: a former offender under a supervision order may be sent back to prison for 90 days if their parole officer believes they pose an "unmanageable risk" to the community.  

“It kind of sets up an opportunity where you served your time but you're still not free,” said lawyer Rob Dhanu, who has dealt with many such cases. 

Advocates say better risk assessments that consider social circumstances could help steer Indigenous people away from supervision, and easier access to psychological treatment and Indigenous cultural programs might keep them from falling back into crime or substance use.  

  “We need to look at what works and what doesn't work,” said Jonathan Rudin, program director of Aboriginal Legal Services, a service provider.  “And jail, generally, has not worked for Indigenous people.”

Indigenous people are more likely to be incarcerated at every stage of their encounter with the criminal justice system, the data show. Before trial, they are more likely to be denied bail; and on conviction, they are more likely to be held in maximum security units - where there is limited access to rehabilitative programs that are often a prerequisite to gaining parole.

Indigenous people are more likely than white people to be denied full parole - even when their parole officer recommends it, according to Parole Board of Canada data obtained through a freedom-of-information request and analyzed by Reuters with the help of University of Toronto criminologist Anthony Doob. 

Crown-Indigenous Affairs Minister Gary Anandasangaree acknowledged Canada has an Indigenous incarceration problem.

"There's more than sufficient evidence to suggest that there is systemic racism within the correctional institutions, as well as the criminal justice system, that have often led to over-incarceration of Indigenous people," he told Reuters. He cited the government’s work to eliminate some mandatory minimum sentences and said the justice system needed to give more weight to Indigenous offenders’ health needs and social history.

The opposition Conservative party, in a tightening race with Liberals ahead of a federal election this year, has adopted a hard line on crime. It has pledged to keep "violent criminals where they belong - behind bars," Larry Brock, Shadow Minister for Justice and Attorney General, said in a statement to Reuters.

Brock did not comment on the overrepresentation of Indigenous people in prison. But he noted that Indigenous people themselves are often the victims of crime.

HISTORY OF TRAUMA

More than 30 lawyers, advocates and judges said that poverty and inter-generational trauma - when damaging events visited on one person transfer to their descendants and then snowball - stack the deck against Indigenous people. 

Starblanket was five when his father died by suicide in police custody. Around the same time, according to court documents, Starblanket was abused by a male relative.

He was seven when he and his four siblings were taken into foster care after his mother, who was doing sex work at the time, was jailed for the manslaughter of a violent client, according to court transcripts. She was eventually pardoned.  

Starblanket shuttled between his mother's place and 15 foster homes in the Saskatoon and Regina areas, according to testimony in the court record. 

Starblanket's mother Beverley Johnston said she apologized to her children for what they went through.

"I felt bad for them that they ended up in foster,"  she told Reuters.

A Statistics Canada study published last month found higher rates of physical and mental illness, economic hardship and homelessness among Indigenous people who spent time in government care as children. Indigenous children comprise more than half of all children in foster care in Canada.

At 16, Starblanket was criminally charged for the first time with robbery and assault after following his victim off a bus and heading-butting him twice, according to court documents. "I committed a senseless crime," he says.

He was sentenced in 1999 to 13 months in custody. 

Four days before Starblanket was sentenced, Canada's Supreme Court issued a decision declaring the mass incarceration of Indigenous people "a crisis." It urged the judicial system to take Indigenous people's circumstances into account, including substance use or family breakdown.

Starblanket's sentence was the first of 23 violent convictions, mostly for robberies and assault, many when he was drunk or using meth or cocaine, according to court records. He was convicted of punching his mother; biting and attempting to strangle a former partner; cutting a woman's chin with a broken beer bottle; punching a hotel clerk; robbing two teens of $16.50.

In 2014, he and a woman were convicted of robbing a convenience store and threatening the clerk with a Taser, according to court records.  

Three years later, Starblanket, then in prison, was designated a dangerous offender - someone who could be imprisoned indefinitely. The ruling cited a pattern of violent behavior and "a likelihood of causing injury or inflicting severe psychological damage on other persons."

Marchand, the Chief Justice of British Columbia, said the standardized risk assessments used in dangerous offender decisions factor in prior convictions and substance use, but do not account for the circumstances of Indigenous people. He did not comment on Starblanket's case.

RELEASE

Starblanket's lawyer, Mike Nolin, appealed the dangerous offender designation and in 2019 the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal ruled the sentencing judge did not adequately consider the possibility of treating Starblanket for substance use and antisocial personality disorder. The dangerous offender designation was overturned. 

Starblanket was released from prison in 2022 - but placed under a five-year supervision order.

After his release, Starblanket moved in with his partner under orders not to drink or do drugs, to attend treatment, and not to travel. The couple's child, Anastasia, turns two on April 1.

Fourteen months into his long-term supervision order came what Starblanket calls “the slip”: He did meth.

He told his parole officer, knowing he would fail a drug test. His parole officer ordered him to move to the halfway house - a facility providing housing, meals and some services for people on day parole or supervision orders. Starblanket is required to check in three times a day.

For Starblanket, the restrictions grate - especially not being able to live at home with his family. But he also says he sees the support they can provide. He worries about how he will adjust when his long-term supervision order is up in November 2027. Above all, he wants to rebuild his life and avoid a return to prison.

"I don't want to be asking for permission forever," Starblanket said. "And I won't be."

Once free, he wants to go to university to study psychology, he said. He says he wants to be a voice for other Indigenous people caught up in the justice system. Maybe run a halfway house himself someday.

(Reporting by Anna Mehler Paperny; Editing by Caroline Stauffer and Suzanne Goldenberg)