Correctional Services and Race

Question

A student is looking for statistics around race and prisoners/prison population. I know the Adult Correctional Services Survey does tell us how many aboriginal inmates there are, but I'm wondering if that's as far as we can get with respect to race/ethnicity of the Canadian prison population. Am I missing anything?

Answer

Looking at the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, the only information available on race/ethnicity for the prison population is an Aboriginal identifier.

They suggested that you contact the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) (http://www.csc-scc.gc.ca/text/cont-eng.shtml) to see if they collect data on the race or ethnicity of individuals in their facilities. They are not sure however if they would collect data for provincial/territorial institutions.

You could have luck with CSC. I browsed the Publications section of the CSC website and one of their publications includes a figure that shows the % of the offender population (as of April 9, 2006) which is Caucasian, Hispanic, Aboriginal, Asian, Black and Other. The publication also includes a table that shows a more detailed description of the offender population as well as counts and % changes for 2001-2002 and 2005-2006. (Source: Corrections and Conditional Release Statistical Overview 2006 -
http://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/res/cor/rep/_fl/FINAL%20English%20CCRSO%202006.pdf -- see pages 51 and 52. The notes below the figure and table define "offenders".)