Thank you very much.
Thank you to the committee for inviting us to present. I'll keep my comments brief in the interest of being able to answer some of the questions from the committee. In reviewing some of the proceedings, I realized some questions have come up, so I will try to address those in a very broad way.
I want to start by acknowledging the traditional territory in which we have the privilege of meeting.
In my responsibilities working first with young people, then with men, and then for the last 19 years with women and girls in particular in the justice system, the impact of colonialization and contact becomes very clear when we see the number of indigenous young people--men, but most particularly women--in the prison system.
I also want to acknowledge that there are members of our organization whose interests I represent, particularly our 26 members across the country. They work with marginalized, victimized, criminalized, and institutionalized women and girls. We're best known for the work we do with women in prison, but we actually work with a full range of women. Some of our organizations are the only social service--the only women's service, the only victims' service--in some of their communities. That's part of the context.
I also recognize that I have the responsibility of bringing forth some of the voices of the women who can't be here because they are locked up or institutionalized. Some are in prison. Some are in other forms of detention, such as psychiatric detention and the like. I take that responsibility seriously.
We are now in a situation in which women are the fastest growing prison population in this country. They are also the fastest growing prison population in many other countries. In this country, they are particularly indigenous women, poor women, other racialized women, and women with mental health issues. Those percentages cover a range, except that it's very clear that women who have self-identified as being indigenous women are now more than a third of the federal jail population. More than a third of the women serving federal sentences, and almost half of the women serving sentences of two years or more in this country, are racialized women.
We also see, according to the latest statistics coming out of the Office of the Correctional Investigator, that as many as 45% of those women have significant mental health issues. Not surprisingly, when you look at the indigenous women, you see a significant number of those women, particularly among the women who are dealing with the 91% rate at which they have experienced physical and/or sexual abuse prior to being incarcerated. Their victimization is very clear. Many of them have been left without resources in the community and so have ended up having to self-medicate, in many cases, sometimes with legal and sometimes with illegal or illicit medication or drugs. They often are women who have very few fiscal or financial resources. They often have very few social and personal supports and end up very marginalized very quickly. We've seen cuts to social programs, cuts to health care, and cuts to educational services in this country, so it's not a big surprise that these are also the women who are most clearly impacted by those cuts.
When you look at violence against women generally, and the backlash we've had in this country over the last two decades to much of the important work that's been done on violence against women, again you see the disproportional impact on indigenous women and the way in which that trajectory feeds them right into the streets, where there are very few resources.
The only system that cannot turn its back on them is the criminal justice system. They can be criminalized for anything from being on the street to being seen as a nuisance. When they're being prostituted, often they'll be picked up on charges of armed robbery and robbery when they're actually trying to negotiate payment for the sex acts they've provided. They are often reported by the individual who refuses to pay. We have a number of women in prison, particularly indigenous women, in that situation.
We've seen police not come when they've been called when these women are experiencing violence. They have essentially been deputized by the state, but we've had the withdrawal of state support and then the invasion of state support when it comes to following up after they have been left to defend themselves or defend others.
You would know well many of the stories. You've been across the country and have heard some of the stories of 9-1-1 calls not being answered until there is something else besides the situation of a woman being beaten. If you need stories, I can give you stories of the number of women who talk about having called the police.
The police don't come when they're called as a result of a woman being battered; they come when they're told that the woman has actually had to defend herself, that she might have stabbed someone who has attacked her or that sort of thing.
You know about the issues of the decisions to prosecute even in situations in which there may be defences. I can also give you examples of the numbers of times women plead to charges even when they know they have not committed the offence for which they've been charged. That's for all kinds of reasons. They're expected to by their families. They're expected to by others. They don't want to sit in custody, waiting. Contrary to some of the rhetoric we hear, they don't actually want to sit on remand and in custody for extended periods of time.
Even after those situations have occurred, we also have situations in which we've succeeded in encouraging women to appeal their sentences. A woman successfully appealed as recently as last month. After winning an appeal after she had defended herself against an attacker, her sentence was overturned, the conviction was overturned, and a new trial was set. When she was asked to potentially go for bail, she could not put up any property because she and all of her family lived on-reserve, and on the reserve, of course, the band council owns the property. Even though I offered to put up my house as a surety, she refused that.
Everybody agreed that she had a very strong case for self-defence. Clearly the crown did too, because when she won her appeal, the crown immediately offered her a deal to plead. She initially had been convicted of second-degree murder, and the crown offered her a deal of manslaughter and time served. That's what she ended up agreeing to, because she didn't want to sit in jail for another year or two awaiting a new trial, even though there was a strong case of self-defence. She wanted to get back to her child and get back to the community.
There are many other examples. Suffice it to say that I'll look forward to the questions.