Time spent in pre-trial custody increasing in Nunavut: Statistics Canada

The Baffin Correctional Centre in Iqaluit: a new Statistics Canada report shows the average time spent by an inmate in pre-trial custody is 23 days, the third highest number after NWT and Newfoundland and Labrador. (FILE PHOTO)

Nunavummiut in remanded custody are spending more time awaiting trial than they were 10 years ago, bucking stable trends reported in the rest of Canada over the same period.

That’s according to a new report by the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, published Jan. 10 by Statistics Canada.

Nunavut adults spent a median of 23 days in remanded custody between 2014 and 2015: an increase of 20 days over the three days average reported in 2004 and 2005.

In contrast, only two other jurisdictions reported increases over the same period—the Yukon and British Columbia—both of which recorded a five-day increase in remanded custody periods.

Nunavut’s surge in remand duration is the highest reported increase in Canada, but it does not represent the overall highest wait time.

That honour belongs to the Northwest Territories which reported a average of 29 days between 2014 and 2015, but that’s still an improvement from the 35 days reported 10 years earlier.

Overall, the StatsCan report says the number of remanded individuals increased across the country over the last decade, noting “the number of adults held in remand on a typical day increased 39 per cent [since 2004].”

Nunavut did remain relatively stable in comparison to the national trend, reporting the same percentage of remanded individuals in comparison to that of sentenced prisoners held in territorial custody over the same period.

The difference is that many of those remanded individuals now wait longer before their legal issues are resolved.

The increase in remand times adds strain to the already overburdened justice system in the territory, which was described in 2015 by Nunavut’s then-deputy minister of justice, Elizabeth Sanderson, as risking “significant breach of constitutional obligations.”

Since that time, the $16-million dollar Makigiarvik facility in Iqaluit was opened to alleviate inmate crowding in Baffin Correctional Centre there, but the territory still lacks approximately 70 beds to correct territorial shortages, the Auditor General of Canada said in a critical 2015 report.

The StatsCan report adds that Aboriginal people continue to be an over-represented group in provincial and territorial corrections systems across Canada, where they account for about one-quarter of in-custody demographics nationally, but making up only three per cent of Canada’s overall population.

According to the report, at least 70 per cent of individuals in both remanded and sentenced custody identified as Indigenous within Nunavut in 2015.

And Aboriginal youth also make up a larger portion of remanded underage individuals over the past 10 years in Canada, the report noted, which also added that youth crime, on the whole, is decreasing.

Nunavut reported a similar decrease in the percentage of youth held in pre-trial custody over the same period.

The report seems at odds with a recently released “report card” on Nunavut’s criminal justice system by the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, an Ottawa-based think-tank.

That report gave Nunavut an A and A+ in efficiency and fairness, and access to justice, although failed the territory in categories of victim support and cost.