Giving people longer prison sentences for hurting Indigenous victims actually ends up putting more Indigenous people behind bars. It’s a mess.
Because victims and offenders in Indigenous communities are often in close social and spatial proximity, policies meant to protect victims end up disproportionately punishing the same demographic group they intend to help. This creates a legal feedback loop where 'getting tough' on crime exacerbates the very systemic inequality it tries to solve.
Reconciling Indigeneity of Victims and Offenders in Sentencing: Untangling A Legal Paradox
SSRN · 6468804
This article examines how Canadian sentencing practices account for both the Indigeneity of offenders and victims of violent crime with the objective of reducing different but related forms of Indigenous over-representation in the criminal legal system. It has been suggested that responding to the vulnerability of Indigenous victims of violent crime through harsher punishments will paradoxically exacerbate the over-incarceration of Indigenous offenders. Taking this premise as a point of departur