Asians, Filipinos, Arabs ‘Underrepresented’ in Federal Prisons, Correctional Service Canada Says

Federal prisons have disproportionately few Canadians whose ethnic origins are Chinese, Filipino, and Arab or West Asian, the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) said, but didn’t provide a clear definition of what it said was an “underrepresentation” of these ethnicities in prisons.

“Chinese and Filipino men were underrepresented in institutional and community offender populations,” the CSC said in a study, obtained by Blacklock’s Reporter. The study also said people of these ethnicities in prison typically serve less than four years for non-violent crimes like drug offences, according to Blacklock’s.

Chinese Canadians made up 5 percent (1.8 million) of the total Canadian population, while Filipino Canadians comprise about 3 percent (837,130 people) of the general population, according to the 2016 Census. In federal prisons, Chinese Canadians account for less than half a percent of inmates, and Filipino Canadians make up less than half of 1 percent of federal prisoners, Blacklock’s Reporter said.

Meanwhile, in a Nov. 30, 2022, release containing parts of the study, the federal correctional agency said, “Black men and women and Southeast Asian men were overrepresented” in CSC institutions compared to the general population of these ethnicities in Canada.

“While representing three percent of the Canadian public Black men represented nine percent of men in custody,” the report said. It also noted that “Indigenous men represented five percent of the Canadian public compared with 25 percent of men in custody.”

Data provided in the release said although there was a decline in the black male offender population from fiscal years 2015/2016 to 2018/2019, this decline mirrored an increase in the number of offenders in the “No Data” group, meaning there was no ethnocultural data for the offenders. Conversely, the offender population of black men increased between 2018/2019 and 2019/2020, which paralleled the decline in the “No Data” group. Similar trends were seen among black women offenders, where the decline from an earlier high at 2012/2013 coincided with an increase in the “No Data” group.

The Epoch Times reached out to the CSC in regard to its definitions of “overrepresented” and “underrepresented” of a certain ethnicity in its offender population. The agency said it was unable to provide a detailed response by the time of publication. The Epoch Times requested the full report from the CSC research branch, but didn’t hear back.

The study, titled “Ethnocultural Offenders in Federal Custody: An Examination of Admission, In-Custody, and Community Supervision Indicators,” examined ethnocultural diversity trends over an 11-year period in the federal offender population specific to non-white and non-indigenous offenders, the release said.

“Canada is a multicultural society with a growing ethnocultural population which is mirrored in the Correctional Service’s offender population,” the release said. “Thus research on ethnocultural offenders, particularly groups overrepresented in the correctional population, should be conducted regularly.”

Recidivism

According to another federal study, titled “A Comprehensive Study of Recidivism Rates among Canadian Federal Offenders,” Asians were least likely of any prison group to reoffend, while indigenous offenders were most likely to commit another crime.

Recidivism averaged 19 percent for Asians, 36 percent for black inmates, and 40 percent for Caucasians.

“The designation of ethnic groups is problematic,” the report said. “We provided the analysis, however, to assist in determining whether some groups with higher recidivism rates may require more service in order to improve the gap in outcomes on their release.”

The study says, “Recidivism is a stringent test of the effectiveness of a correctional agency,”  though the measure is “not sensitive to more subtle indications that offenders may be reducing the volume and seriousness of their involvement in criminal behaviour.”

Meanwhile, the Liberal government has passed legislation, Bill C-5, under the premise of reducing “overrepresentation” of black, indigenous, and marginalized people in jails.

The bill, which received royal assent on Nov. 17, 2022, was a reintroduction of the former Bill C-22 in the 43rd Parliament, and repeals mandatory minimum penalties (MMP) for gun-related offences such as robbery with a firearm, extortion with a firearm, weapons trafficking, discharging a firearm with intent, and using a firearm in the commission of a crime.

The Justice Department said in a December 2021 release that Bill C-5 would help address the issue of “systemic racism in Canada’s criminal justice system,” which has a “disproportionate representation of Indigenous peoples, as well as Black Canadians and members of marginalized communities.”