Good afternoon.
My name is Jacinthe Poulin and I am a Health and Social Services Advisor for the Regroupement des centres d'amitié autochtone du Québec. My background is in criminology. So I am very interested in the topic being studied today.
We have had various concerns about the directions suggested for today's discussion.
First, the Gladue reports are underused in Quebec compared to the rest of Canada, which we think may have an influence not only on the judicial process that leads indigenous women to serve sentences in a penitentiary, but also on sentencing.
We also want to share with you today one of our other concerns about the lack of understanding of the justice system and the processes. The result of this lack of understanding is that indigenous accused plead guilty more often.
The traditional way of settling First Nations and Inuit conflicts leads people to admit to committing criminal acts when it would sometimes be in their interest to plead not guilty. We think it is important to point this out.
We would also like to talk about one of the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, which issued two calls for action on training lawyers and law students on indigenous realities and cultural competence development. That's an aspect we want to share with you today.
There is also the way the correctional system treats women. We also have concerns about the actuarial risk management tools used by the Correctional Service of Canada. Those tools are systematically discriminatory, since they take into account static risk factors, such as age and sex, but mainly dynamic risk factors, those related to economic living conditions, poverty, addiction and mental health problems. Other witnesses have mentioned all those aspects.
As you know, in the case of incarcerated indigenous people, using such dynamic factors to analyze the risk will often result in a higher security classification. As our colleagues have pointed out, indigenous people often end up with maximum or enhanced maximum security, which means that they are considered to be high-risk, high-needs offenders. Indigenous female offenders are more often placed in isolation than non-indigenous female offenders and they are released on parole less often. Those are concerns for us.
There has been a change in the tools being used. We have moved from the level of service or case management inventory (LS/CMI) to the security classification scale, but both are actuarial tools.
Furthermore, security classifications have an impact on the programs to which indigenous female inmates can have access. Clearly, when a female inmate has a maximum security or enhanced maximum security classification, it is difficult to access certain programs.
Quebec has a penitentiary for women that offers those programs, in Joliette. We were told that the small number of women and the fact that they are often assigned a high security classification means that they do not have access to correctional programs. There is only one indigenous healing centre for women in Canada, in Saskatchewan. Of course, women in Quebec do not have access to that healing centre. In addition, section 81 of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act refers to those healing centres. The first criterion for going to those centres is that the offender is able to obtain a minimum security classification or, as the case may be, a medium security classification. This means that women do not have access to those healing centres.
Our experience on the ground shows that indigenous communities and indigenous people in urban areas are divided on traditional healing. Not all indigenous women adhere to traditional healing and may not be comfortable with programs for the general population. So there is a lack of services for those women. Cultural reappropriation is not the solution for all women.
Over time, various strategies have been put in place by the Correctional Service of Canada. It would be interesting to find out the outcome of the evaluation of those strategies. We are talking about hiring aboriginal staff—