Earlier this week, @StatCan_eng released their report on adult and youth correctional services in Canada in 2018/2019. Shockingly, Ontario leads all of Canada in the incarceration of presumed innocent people held in pre-trial custody. More than 72% of inmates are awaiting trial.

Meanwhile, in PEI, less that 30% of the prison population is held on remand pending trial. These stats show Ontario still heavily favours pre-detention over bail and political rhetoric claiming our justice system is a "revolving door" is likely a significant contributing factor.

Notwithstanding efforts of @MinJusticeEn to address racial injustice in the justice system, there was almost no improvement in the over incarceration of Indigenous adults who accounted for 30% of prison admissions despite representing only 4.5% of the Canadian adult population.

This racial disparity was even more acute in Manitoba and Saskatchewan where Indigenous adults represented three-quarters of admissions to custody. For reference they comprise approximately 15% of the adult population in those provinces.

Indigenous women are even more over-represented in the prison system than Indigenous men. Indigenous women now make up more than 40% of all prison admissions across Canada. In the Federal prison system, Indigenous women admissions are up 4% over the previous year.

Indigenous youth are also significantly over-represented in prisons across Canada. In 2018, Indigenous youth represented 8.8% of the youth population in Canada. Meanwhile, Indigenous youth represented 43% of youth admissions to correctional services in 2018/2019.

Our justice system continues to fail Indigenous people notwithstanding cases and laws that instruct judges that sentences should consider all available sanctions other than imprisonment with particular attention to and recognition of the adverse background of Indigenous offenders

One final thought: The costs of housing an inmate pending trial or serving a sentence is staggering. It costs Canadians $318 per day per federal offender ($116,070 annually) and $259 per day to supervise a provincial inmate ($94,535 annually).

Compare those prison costs to the average price of tuition for a full time undergraduate program in Canada which costs $6,580 in 2019/2020. Instead of sending one person to jail, our government could actually pay for them to study (along with 14 others) for the same price.

The entire report is available here: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/85-002-x/2020001/article/00016-eng.htm and also contains some interesting statistics on changes in federal and provincial custodial populations during the COVID-19 pandemic.