'A national travesty:' Prison watchdog urges reform to tackle Indigenous over-incarceration

Canada's prison watchdog is denouncing the over-representation of Indigenous people in federal prisons as a travesty while urging significant reform, as he releases the second part of a two-year investigation.

In the conclusion of his Ten Years Since Spirit Matters report, Correctional Investigator Ivan Zinger calls for the devolution of correctional power to Indigenous people to address worsening rates of over-representation.

"The steady and unabated increase in the disproportionate representation of Indigenous peoples under federal sentence is nothing short of a national travesty and remains one of Canada's most pressing human rights challenges," Zinger wrote.

His latest findings were released Wednesday with the office's 50th annual report, which says the over-representation of  Indigenous people in federal prisons has been an area of steady concern since the correctional investigator's office was created.

It's a crisis Zinger has sounded the alarm over with stronger language every year.

"I am deeply frustrated and disappointed each time I report on reaching or surpassing yet another sad milestone," he wrote in this year's annual message, dated June 2023 but tabled in the House of Commons on Wednesday.

"Canada's federal correctional system needs to get on board and begin to divest itself of the authorities, controls and resources that have kept Indigenous people over-incarcerated for far too long."

CBC News contacted Correctional Service Canada (CSC) for comment but has not received a response by time of publishing.

Zinger is scheduled to speak to the findings with Indigenous leaders at a news conference Thursday morning in Ottawa.

The original Spirit Matters report was tabled in Parliament 10 years ago. When it was released, Indigenous people made up 25 per cent of federal inmates. Today, it's 32 per cent, with things still not improving, Zinger found.

The correctional investigator's team conducted 223 interviews with Indigenous prisoners, elders and spiritual advisors, CSC staff, and executive directors of healing lodges and community-based residential facilities at 30 penitentiaries and 81 healing lodges countrywide. 

The findings offer withering criticism of Canada's prison system. 

"The plight of Indigenous peoples behind bars has become steadily and progressively worse," he wrote.

"Indeed, Canada's correctional population is becoming disturbingly and unconscionably Indigenized."