Aboriginal People Case Study

The criminal justice system in any country should strive to ensure that all people are treated fairly under and before the law, but Canada’s legal system has undoubtedly failed Aboriginal People in this regard. This injustice toward Aboriginal People in Canada has centred around their disproportionate representation within the Canadian justice system in comparison to non-Aboriginal People. This issue has garnered attention in recent years as Aboriginal People are continuously overpoliced and overincarcerated, often without proper rehabilitation or community reintegration to prevent re-entry into the criminal justice system. The over-representation of Aboriginal People is a nationwide responsibility because it stems from Canada’s history of

Given the current state of the issue, many Aboriginal People are guaranteed to be involved with the justice system at some point in their lives. According to Frideres (2016), approximately 90 per cent of Aboriginal People have been involved with the criminal justice system by the age of twenty-four as either a victim, offender or witness (p. 94). Furthermore, the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (1996) stated that Aboriginal People are “incarcerated in provincial jails at 11 time the rate of other Canadians; in federal penitentiaries the rate is five times that of other Canadians” (p. 40). Although the data may be viewed as a cumulation of individual cases, the rates of over-representation could also suggest that Aboriginal People are not more likely engage in criminal behaviour but instead are targets of a system deeply embedded with colonial attitudes. The statistics on this issue demonstrate a pattern of Aboriginal over-representation in comparison to other Canadians, which suggests that an examination of the social and historical influences on Aboriginal Peoples’ involvement with the Canadian justice system is necessary to uncover why they are disproportionately

There has been a long history of conflict between police and Aboriginal People that has lead to mutual dissent and distrust from the Canadian police agencies and Aboriginal People. In the past, the Canadian government established the North West Mounted Police to further the colonial agenda by controlling the Aboriginal population within their reserves. In present times, more contemporary issues include the Starlight Tours in Saskatoon, whereby Aboriginal men that were suspected to be behaving unlawfully were taken out of the city by police and left to freeze to death (Neeganagwedgin, 2014). Operating under the guise of maintaining “getting tough on crime”, police are criminalizing Aboriginal People at an excessive rate by engaging in focused policing in areas that are highly-populated with Aboriginal People. Aboriginal People are often targets of racial profiling, which is a process whereby Aboriginal men and women are regularly stopped by the police because “Indigenous men … are suspected of being in the drug trade or in a gang … Indigenous women, on the other hand, are often perceived as sex workers” (Neeganagwedgin, 2014). Stemming from Canada’s history of systemic racism toward Aboriginal People,