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In the eight years since, McClintic has earned no rewards for good behaviour. In 2012 she pleaded guilty to assaulting fellow inmate Aimee McIntyre, with whom she had requested to work in a peer-support program.

“Trying to get some shots through her arms, finally I brought my foot up tried stompin’ on her face a couple times,” McClintic wrote to a friend, describing the assault. (She affixed a smiley face to the aforementioned sentence.) “Point made, statement just not as loud as I would have liked it to be.” McClintic lamented she could have done more damage to McIntyre in a larger room.

Photo by Handout

“The focal point (of Okimaw Ohci) is the spiritual lodge where teachings, ceremonies and workshops with elders take place,” the Correctional Service Canada website reads. “The women learn how to live independently by cooking, doing laundry, cleaning and doing outdoor maintenance chores.”

One hopes the joint is prepared.

Regardless, the decision doesn’t just offend on grounds of insufficient punishment or threat to public safety — though I’m plenty offended on both grounds and I consider myself something of a bleeding heart. (We’re not even entitled to an explanation. Correctional Service Canada won’t disclose McClintic’s location, the London Free Press reported; the news came instead from Tori’s “enraged” father.)

It also offends on grounds of unequal treatment. It is a long-established principle of the criminal justice system that “particular attention” be given to “the circumstances of Aboriginal offenders” in considering sentencing alternatives to imprisonment. The court heard of McClintic’s truly lousy childhood: abandoned by her mother, using opioids by age eight, no secondary education at all. And certainly, more Indigenous children suffer in such circumstances than non-Indigenous. But the effects on children’s lives and future prospects are the same. We should either take them into account or we shouldn’t.