An upcoming Supreme Court of Canada ruling could decide whether controversial tests that are used to predict criminals’ likelihood to reoffend violate the Charter rights of Indigenous people.
In 2017, Jeffrey Ewert, an Indigenous inmate, challenged the reliability of risk assessments. The tests assign a score to an inmate and can guide sentencing.
Ewert has been in the federal prison system for 30 years, serving a life sentence for second-degree murder and attempted murder.
Some legal experts and psychologists argue that the tests can disproportionately affect inmates who are visible minorities, and particularly, Indigenous people, leading to longer sentences and lower chances of parole on the basis of a high score.
In 2016, 26 per cent of inmates in federal prisons were Indigenous, while…
