Collecting Data on Aboriginal People in the Criminal Justice System: Methods and Challenges

The objective of this report is to present the status of national data on Aboriginal people in the criminal justice system. This report begins by identifying gaps in information on Aboriginal people who come into contact with the criminal justice system. It then presents the preferred method of measuring and identifying Aboriginal people, and follows with a general overview of issues related to collecting data from administrative data sources. The report then examines the collection, and the potential collection, of an individual's Aboriginal identity through various justice-related surveys at Statistics Canada. Issues related to the collection, the quality and the coverage for each survey are also presented. In addition, the report briefly describes efforts to collect information on Aboriginal identity in Australia, New Zealand, and the United States. Efforts to collect ethnicity data in general in England and Wales will also be summarized in order to illustrate steps taken by other countries to improve this type of data for social policy reasons.