This is the repository for a talk on an investigation into systemic bias in Canada's federal prison risk assessments. The slides can be found here: https://tomcardoso.github.io/carleton-bias-2022/
This talk was originally given to the Digital Criminology (CRCJ3202) class at Carleton University on September 28, 2022. Here’s a brief description of the work discussed:
In late October, The Globe and Mail published Bias Behind Bars, a front-page investigation into systemic racism in federal prisons using a database of more than 50,000 people obtained via a freedom of information request. Risk assessments, used widely within the prison system, are meant to be an impartial guide of who can be rehabilitated and how soon, but racialized people routinely get the worst possible scores. These assessments are steeped in decades of research – but, as The Globe found, they’re also fundamentally, powerfully biased against Indigenous and Black prisoners, placing them in higher security classifications and assigning them worse odds of successfully re-entering society. Since Bias Behind Bars was published, two proposed class-action lawsuit have been launched on behalf of tens of thousands of prisoners, the House of Commons public safety committee vowed to study the issue, and the Auditor-General issued a report reiterating The Globe's findings.
Links to stories in the series:
- Bias behind bars: A Globe investigation finds a prison system stacked against Black and Indigenous inmates (Oct. 24, 2020)
- How we did it: How The Globe uncovered systemic bias in prisoners’ risk assessments (Oct. 24, 2020)
- A shot in the dark and 185 megabytes of data: How I investigated a system of bias in Canada’s prison system (Oct. 24, 2020)
- ‘This needs action’: NDP, experts call for solutions to racial bias in federal prison risk assessments (Oct. 26, 2020)
- Fight against systemic racism in prison wins all-party support (Oct. 26, 2020)
- More needs to be done to fight systemic racism in federal prisons, Justin Trudeau says (Oct. 27, 2020)
- MPs ask Bill Blair for timeline to address systemic racism in prisons (Nov. 2, 2020)
- For Indigenous women, systemic racial bias in prison leaves many worse off than men (Dec. 31, 2020)
- Inmate risk assessment tool still in use 16 years after report raises concerns about bias against women (Jan. 3, 2021)
- Proposed class-action suit against Ottawa suggests inmates face systemic bias in risk assessments (Jan. 12, 2021)
- Injunction request aims to end prison risk-assessment tool biased against Indigenous people (June 2, 2021)
- No way out: Once behind bars, racialized people are far less likely to get paroled when they are eligible. A Globe analysis examines why (February 22, 2022)
- Auditor-General says corrections authorities not preventing systemic racism in federal prisons (May 31, 2022)