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OTTAWA — A separate system for sentencing aboriginal offenders might be the key to dealing with the disproportionate number of indigenous people behind bars, suggests a federally commissioned study.

A stand-alone code for meting out penalties to indigenous offenders could flow from a newly created national sentencing commission with a mandate to issue legally binding guidelines, says the research study prepared for Justice Canada.

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Given the failure of past attempts to address the swelling number of incarcerated indigenous people, “a more radical approach is clearly necessary” — especially in light of the federal Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s call to eliminate overrepresentation over the next decade, says the study.

The Canadian Press used the Access to Information law to recently obtain a draft version of the August 2015 study, Sentencing Reform: Lessons from Foreign Jurisdictions and Options for Canada. It was written by Julian Roberts, a criminology professor at the University of Oxford in England and a member of the Sentencing Council of England and Wales.