Indigenous youth twice as likely to get custody, study finds

Indigenous youth found guilty in Canadian youth courts were about twice as likely as White youth to be sentenced to custody, even after accounting for the seriousness of the offence, Statistics Canada said Oct. 15.

The federal agency’s Juristat study covers completed youth court cases from 2016-17 to 2022-23. It found Indigenous youth were 101 per cent more likely than White youth to receive custody once found guilty, after adjusting for the most serious offence in each case. The raw rates were 12 per cent for Indigenous youth and six per cent for White youth.

Indigenous youth made up eight per cent of the youth population but 27 per cent of those accused in youth court, Statistics Canada said. White youth were 60 per cent of the population and 52 per cent of the accused.

The gap showed up across nearly every breakdown the agency examined. The difference was widest in British Columbia and the territories, at 139 per cent, followed by the Atlantic provinces at 121 per cent. It was also larger for youth with five or more prior convictions (119 per cent) than for those with none (102 per cent).

The year-by-year figures were uneven. The gap was 69 per cent in 2016-17, peaked at 200 per cent in 2021-22 and fell to 48 per cent in 2022-23. Quebec data were not available for the last two years, and Statistics Canada said COVID-19 affected court operations, especially in 2020-21.

Outcomes before sentencing also differed. Indigenous youth were 18 per cent more likely to have their case stayed, a decision to stop a prosecution, and the figure for 2022-23 alone was 54 per cent. They were 16 per cent less likely to have a case withdrawn, dismissed or discharged. Among those found guilty, Indigenous youth were 10 per cent less likely to get probation and 15 per cent more likely to get a fine or community service.

The numbers sit on top of a long-running pattern. A Justice Canada fact sheet using 2014-15 data said Indigenous youth were 37 per cent of custody admissions while making up about seven per cent of the youth population. Statistics Canada’s new study said Indigenous youth accounted for 41 per cent of youth correctional admissions in 2022-23, against about eight per cent of the population.

Courts have been told for decades to weigh that history. The Supreme Court of Canada’s 1999 Gladue decision and its 2012 Ipeelee ruling require judges to consider the systemic factors behind Indigenous people’s involvement with the justice system when they sentence. The Juristat article notes that Gladue courts and Gladue reports exist in some jurisdictions, yet the disparities persist, particularly for youth with extensive prior contact. The top court also set out a sentencing framework in an Indigenous assault case this month, and the Quewezance sisters’ new appeal shows how long such questions can take to resolve. Our earlier explainer on overrepresentation and the school-to-prison pipeline covers the wider background.

The study has limits. It adjusts only for the severity of the most serious offence, not for other factors that may shape a sentence. Statistics Canada said the analysis “does not account for broader contributing factors, such as colonization,” and that the disparities should be read in that context. The release does not report on pretrial detention, so it cannot show where in the process the gap begins. Statistics Canada is the only source for the new figures, and no independent analysis was available at publication.

For young Canadians, the findings put numbers to a question the courts have been asked for a generation: whether the tools meant to reduce Indigenous incarceration are working for teenagers. Statistics Canada’s data suggest that, for custody sentences at least, the gap has not closed.

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Via Statistics Canada, The Daily (Oct. 15, 2026). Background from Justice Canada .

File photo: the Supreme Court of Canada in Ottawa, not from the study.

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