The department uses the custody rating scale, and that tool was designed over 25 years ago based on a sample population of male offenders. It uses that tool to assess women offenders. Its own studies have found problems with the predictive reliability of that tool to ensure that the women get assigned to the appropriate level of security.
We found that indigenous women offenders are on average held at higher levels of security than non-indigenous women, and that is problematic for us. We did make a recommendation that they incorporate tools to consider an offender's aboriginal social history so that they can identify ways to mitigate the risks that these offenders pose, and therefore, they would not necessarily have to place them at such high levels of security.