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The combined initiative by Parliament and the Supreme Court of Canada to reduce overrepresentation of Aboriginal peoples in prison with an Indigenous-discount strategy is failing badly.

In the mid-1990s when the Criminal Code was amended to have judges consider the specific circumstances of Aboriginal offenders, Indigenous peoples made up 16 per cent of those in custody.

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By 2012, when the Supreme Court doubled down on the approach, that number had hit 28 per cent of those incarcerated where it sits today, even though Indigenous peoples constitute only about three per cent of the population.

The number of Aboriginal women imprisoned is even more disproportionate: 43 per cent.

Things are not just worse — they’re a lot worse.

The problem, however, may not be the approach but rather the failure of governments to fund the required specialized pre-sentence assessments, known as Gladue reports, and the judiciary’s continuing uneasiness with their sometimes broad-brushstroke sociology.