Reducing the Overrepresentation of Indigenous People in Canada’s Criminal Justice System through Attention to Colonialism and Its Consequences
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The significant overrepresentation of Indigenous people in Canada’s criminal justice system has been a persistent problem for decades and is still a problem today, despite efforts by various governments to tackle the issue. However, a recent follow-up study on Indigenous offenders who managed to stay crime-free for at least three years following their participation in VisionQuest’s substance abuse treatment program in British Columbia found that it is possible to overcome the problem of overrepresentation. The program is unique in that it aims to assist Indigenous offenders in their efforts to lead crime-free, substance abuse-free, and productive lives, by paying special attention to the challenges imposed upon them by the consequences of colonialism. With this in mind, the central research question posed by my dissertation work is: What elements, among the self-reported program intervention and non-program experiences of Indigenous offenders who have participated in the VisionQuest program, best assist them in overcoming the challenges and consequences of colonialism in their efforts to lead crime-free lives? As my dissertation describes, I approached the question by conducting semi-structured, face-to-face interviews with ten clients and ten staff members from the VisionQuest program. Collectively, the results of the interviews provide confirmation of the significant consequences and challenges faced by Indigenous offenders. More importantly, they provide confirmation of why our attentiveness to the consequences and challenges of colonialism is so critical to assisting Indigenous offenders in leading crime-free lives. The findings should be helpful in informing those leading substance-abuse programs on how they might enhance their capacity to assist Indigenous offenders in remaining crime free. Equally importantly, the findings may inform governments and the criminal justice community about how they might better address the disproportionate numbers of Indigenous people in the Canadian criminal justice system. Keywords: overrepresentation, Indigenous, colonialism, substance abuse, recidivism, criminal justice
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.031 | 0.009 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".