Senator Kim Pate

This report focuses on the circumstances faced by 12 Indigenous women who have experienced miscarriages of justice. To be clear, there are more than these 12, but these are cases we know well. We advocate that their cases be reviewed as a group in order to enable a more fulsome identification and analysis of the intersections and patterns of systemic inequality, discrimination and violence experienced by each, both prior to and throughout the criminal legal system.

Despite decades of legislative and policy efforts to address systemic racism and misogyny in the criminal legal system, overrepresentation of Indigenous women in federal prisons has continued to skyrocket. The most recent data indicates that Indigenous women account for half of all women in federal prisons, yet represent fewer than 4% of women in Canada.

Indigenous women disproportionately experience miscarriages of justice: they are charged, prosecuted, convicted and imprisoned following systemic and discriminatory failures of the criminal legal and prison systems to adequately recognize, contextualize or address the inequities, racism, sexism, violence and ongoing trauma of their lives.

The result is layer upon layer of compounding inequality, beginning with the circumstances that lead to Indigenous women being subject to but underprotected by the state, deputized to protect themselves and those in their care, but then disproportionately charged and criminalized when they respond to violence.

Read the Full Report.