An Indigenous Senator who is trying to change how perpetrators of violence against Indigenous women are sentenced in Canada says a soon to be released report shows that courts are more lenient to people who kill Indigenous women and girls than to those whose victims are not Indigenous.
Cree Senator Lillian Dyck shared some of the report’s findings with APTN News.
The co-authored paper analyzed data from around 800 cases involving violence against women between 1980 and 2013.
The cases were selected because they reveal the ethnicity of both the victim and the perpetrator, Dyck explained in a phone interview.
Among the researchers’ starkest findings is a disparity between the punishments for those who kill Indigenous women and those who kill non-Indigenous women.
“Even though with murder there is very little wiggle room [with convictions], we did find that if you looked at the type of convictions by the victim’s race, when it was an Indigenous victim most often it was second-degree murder or manslaughter. If it was a non-Indigenous victim it was more likely first or second-degree murder,” Dyck said.
First degree murder convictions are more likely to be given to those who killed a non-Indigenous woman–33 per cent–compared to perpetrators who killed an Indigenous woman, at 20 per cent.
For second degree murder convictions, the rates were 39 per cent in cases where the victim was Indigenous, versus 46 per cent when the victim was not Indigenous.
In contrast, the researchers found 39 per cent of manslaughter convictions in cases where the victim was Indigenous, versus 21 per cent when the victim was non-Indigenous.
People who kill Indigenous women punished less than those who kill non-Indigenous women, Senator’s study finds – APTN News
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