Ontario jails are using a program that claims it can predict prisoners’ behaviour, disproportionately putting Black prisoners in higher-security facilities
Doesn’t this also show that black and indigenous populations despite being a smaller group of the general population are over represented in jail to begin with?
The ministry responsible for Ontario’s prisoners agrees. It wrote in internal training documents viewed exclusively by The Breach that “Indigenous and racialized individuals face systemic discrimination in our justice system … As a result, assessments like SAFER would likely contribute to the overrepresentation of Indigenous inmates in maximum security.”
No that’s saying that they would be overrepresented in maximum security, they have to commit crimes to get there in the first place
A better argument would be, how do you get them to stop committing crime to begin with? and wouldn’t this give an extra incentive to staying out of prison?
I mean this in a non sassy way: did you read the whole article? They discuss this in quite a bit of detail. My response was going to be to just quote more of it to you, but let me know if there is something in there in particular you don’t get.
We can address overrepresentation of Black and Indigenous people in our criminal justice system by tackling racism and colonialism in the people and processes of our criminal justice system and ensuring Black and Indigenous voices are represented in those departments
We can reduce Indigenous People’s (or any community’s) reasons for turning to crime by reducing the social deprivation they face (which our government - like yours most likely - has intentionally engineered for over a century). For example, there should be clean drinking water on reserves, access to higher education, etc.
It doesn’t matter what colour your skin is, we all want an opportunity to succeed and have a good life as we define it; and we all get discouraged when that’s not available
wouldn’t [the threat of institutionalized racism leading to worse accommodations] give an extra incentive to staying out of prison?
I hope others are able to offer more compassion to you than you’ve been able to offer to a very important and marginalized group
Everyone brings up the clean drinking water but how do we do that? Do we force it on them? Build the plant and have people stay there and man it? We build plants we train people and then it gets neglected and eventually breaks down. How do you fix something like that?
One question i don’t know is once a plant is built do they get money for upkeep?
Doesn’t this also show that black and indigenous populations despite being a smaller group of the general population are over represented in jail to begin with?
No (strictly referring to the figure), although there are plenty of data that bear out racist and colonialist injustices in arrests and incarceration rates across Canada like that which you mentioned, this figure only shows % population incarcerated and the breakdown of security levels of those incarcerated. To measure overall overrepresentation, we’d want to compare [proportion of population that’s Indigenous] divided by [proportion of incarcerated population that’s Indigenous] and compare those stats with similar ones for Black, White, etc.
Doesn’t this also show that black and indigenous populations despite being a smaller group of the general population are over represented in jail to begin with?
That’s the point:
No that’s saying that they would be overrepresented in maximum security, they have to commit crimes to get there in the first place
A better argument would be, how do you get them to stop committing crime to begin with? and wouldn’t this give an extra incentive to staying out of prison?
Sort of, but you have cause and effect out of order.
It is well understood that poverty is correlated to crime.
And that racailized people are more often living in poverty.
But underlying all of that is societal failures, not some inherent flaws of those people’s racial identity.
It’s not even that in this case. They discuss it in the article. We’re talking about people in jail pre-trial. They haven’t even been convicted yet.
Well said! Indeed, the commenter in question is straying from the subject of OP
I mean this in a non sassy way: did you read the whole article? They discuss this in quite a bit of detail. My response was going to be to just quote more of it to you, but let me know if there is something in there in particular you don’t get.
We can address overrepresentation of Black and Indigenous people in our criminal justice system by tackling racism and colonialism in the people and processes of our criminal justice system and ensuring Black and Indigenous voices are represented in those departments
We can reduce Indigenous People’s (or any community’s) reasons for turning to crime by reducing the social deprivation they face (which our government - like yours most likely - has intentionally engineered for over a century). For example, there should be clean drinking water on reserves, access to higher education, etc.
It doesn’t matter what colour your skin is, we all want an opportunity to succeed and have a good life as we define it; and we all get discouraged when that’s not available
I hope others are able to offer more compassion to you than you’ve been able to offer to a very important and marginalized group
Everyone brings up the clean drinking water but how do we do that? Do we force it on them? Build the plant and have people stay there and man it? We build plants we train people and then it gets neglected and eventually breaks down. How do you fix something like that?
One question i don’t know is once a plant is built do they get money for upkeep?
Sure but it’s not that simple. They also are usually poorer. And poorer people usually commit more blue collar crimes.
No (strictly referring to the figure), although there are plenty of data that bear out racist and colonialist injustices in arrests and incarceration rates across Canada like that which you mentioned, this figure only shows % population incarcerated and the breakdown of security levels of those incarcerated. To measure overall overrepresentation, we’d want to compare [proportion of population that’s Indigenous] divided by [proportion of incarcerated population that’s Indigenous] and compare those stats with similar ones for Black, White, etc.