The neighbourhood context of urban Aboriginal crime.

• Author: Fitzgerald, Robin T.
• Position: Canada

Introduction

In recent decades, the over-representation (2) of Aboriginal people as offenders in the Canadian criminal justice system has been well documented in numerous empirical studies and has garnered the attention of several provincial and federal commissions of inquiry. (3) In 1996, the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP) (1996) concluded that the evidence presented had "... confirmed the fact of over-representation" of Aboriginal people in the criminal justice system, and "demonstrated that the problem is getting worse, not better" (28-29).

Evidence of over-representation is typically based on the consistent finding that the proportion of Aboriginal people sentenced to terms of provincial/territorial or federal custody outweighs the proportion

of Aboriginal people in the Canadian population. In general terms, the representation of Aboriginal people in total sentenced admissions to custody is about seven times greater than their representation in Canadian and provincial/territorial populations, though this figure varies by region and has increased slightly over time (Beattie 2006: 16; Brzozowski, Taylor-Butts, and Johnson 2006: 13; La Prairie 1992: 3; Roberts and Melchers 2003).

Efforts to understand high Aboriginal representation in the criminal justice system have considered a variety of potential sources of the problem, demonstrating its complex and multifaceted nature. For example, a relatively extensive literature has addressed the contribution of criminal justice processing, including the role of police, courts, and corrections branches, as well as the role of governments through legislation and policy (Doob and Sprott 2007; Gabor 2004; La Prairie 1992; Latimer and Foss 2005; Roberts and Melchers 2003; Wortley and Tanner 2005). In addition, researchers have pointed to the possible contribution of social, economic, and demographic features of Aboriginal communities, as well as to the contribution of the broader social and economic context in Canada (La Prairie 1992; 2002; Richards 2001; Trevethan and Moore 2004).

Notable in this latter body of work are the findings (1) that the socioeconomic status of Aboriginal people "is probably a more potent indicator of who is admitted to correctional institutions than is race" (La Prairie 1992: 1) and (2) that urban contexts may be particularly important to understand, since these have higher proportions of Aboriginal people, concentrated in the most socio-economically disadvantaged areas (Richards 2001). In particular, the increasing size of urban Aboriginal populations, together with their greater concentration in the inner-core areas of cities, areas characterized by greater socio-economic disadvantage and higher crime rates, suggests that it may be particularly important to examine the contribution of Aboriginal living conditions in Canadian cities to the problem of over-representation (Bittle, Quann, Hattem, and Muise 2002; Richards 2001; Statistics Canada 2003).

Based on comparisons of the socio-economic conditions of urban Aboriginal people and provincial sentenced custody rates, Carol La Prairie (2002) has suggested that the conditions in Winnipeg, Regina, and Saskatoon may explain the higher rates of Aboriginal incarceration in the provinces in which these cities are located. Although La Prairie's analyses suggested an association between the socioeconomic conditions of Aboriginal people and their higher crime rates, measured at the level of cities, data limitations did not permit her to explicitly test these links. Her work raises further questions about the factors that may account for the differential distribution of Aboriginal crime/over-representation.

In this study, our aim was to examine the possible contribution of the Canadian urban context to the problem of Aboriginal overrepresentation in the criminal justice system. Specifically, we extended La Prairie's analysis by assessing the extent to which neighbourhood-level social and economic conditions explain the disproportionate occurrence of Aboriginal people as police-reported offenders. Further, we explicitly tested La Prairie's hypothesis about the connection between Aboriginal living conditions and high crime rates by investigating the contribution of neighbourhood social and economic conditions to the relationship between crime rates and Aboriginal residential populations.

Before empirically addressing the research questions, we review current research on the urban context of Aboriginal crime in Canada and propose a theoretical framework to assess the problem of Aboriginal over-representation.

The Canadian urban context and Aboriginal crime rates

The proportion of Aboriginal people living in urban areas is increasing due, in part, to a net migration from reserves and rural non-reserve areas of Canada (O'Donnell and Ballardin 2006; Siggner and Costa 2005). According to the 2001 Census, about half of those who identified themselves as Aboriginal persons lived in an urban area, and over half of the urban Aboriginal population (51%) lived in one of Canada's 10 largest Census Metropolitan Areas (CMAs). Among these large cities, Winnipeg had the greatest number of Aboriginal residents in 2001 (55,755) and, at 8% of the city's total population, one of the highest concentrations (Statistics Canada 2003: 10). (4)

Evidence suggests that, in large Canadian cities, Aboriginal populations suffer higher levels of disadvantage than non-Aboriginal populations. For example, La Prairie (2002) demonstrated that generally, in Canadian CMAs, Aboriginal people had higher rates of poverty, residential mobility, and lone-parent family structures and lower levels of educational attainment and employment than was the case for non-Aboriginal populations. In addition, La Prairie's (2002: 197) work showed that the greatest disparity between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal populations is found in cities in the Prairie provinces, followed by Thunder Bay.

The geographic distribution of disadvantaged Aboriginal populations within large Canadian cities is characterized by an additional dynamic. Many studies have documented increasing levels of neighbourhood segregation by income, in Canada (Frenette, Picot, and Sceviour 2004; Hatfield 1997; Lee 2000; Myles, Picot, and Pyper 2000) and in the United States (Jargowsky 1997; Massey and Denton 1993; Wilson 1987). Several studies have noted that increasing concentrations of Aboriginal people live in low-income neighbourhoods, (5) and this is particularly the case in Winnipeg (e.g., Hatfield 1997; Heisz and McLeod 2004; Richards 2001). For example, based on the 2001 Census, Aboriginal people comprised about 31% of the population residing in Winnipeg's low-income neighbourhoods, an increase of 6% from the previous Census (Heisz and McLeod 2004: 65). Aboriginal people living in low-income neighbourhoods also tend to face greater challenges than their non-Aboriginal neighbours, including lower levels of personal income, educational attainment, employment participation, and residential stability (Richards 2001).

Although there have been many studies of the living conditions of urban Aboriginal populations, less attention has been given to the contribution of these conditions to Aboriginal crime, even though some evidence from correctional studies suggests that a majority of Aboriginal offenders were resident in urban areas. For instance, Johnston (1997) reported that, although the Canadian Aboriginal on-reserve population was about 33% in 1996, in the same year, only about 19% of those incarcerated in federal institutions were from reserves. Further, in a one-day snapshot of Aboriginal youth in custody in Canada, Bittle et al. (2002: 11) reported that 53% of those in custody spent the two years prior to their incarceration in a city and 55% intended to return to a city following custody. These proportions were much higher for Aboriginal youth in custody in Manitoba (65% and 67%, respectively).

The apparent association between the disadvantaged urban living conditions and elevated crime rates of the Canadian Aboriginal population is consistent with social disorganization theory, which was originally developed to explain high crime rates in inner-city neighbourhoods of Chicago. Shaw and McKay (1942) observed that crime and delinquency persisted in certain Chicago neighbourhoods over long periods, despite population turnover. This finding led them to adopt an ecological or community-level orientation to explain crime (for subsequent revisions of this theory, see Bursik 1988; Bursik and Grasmick 1993; Kornhauser 1978; Sampson and Groves 1989; Sampson, Raudenbush, and Earls 1997).

Shaw and McKay (1942) proposed that explanations for higher delinquency rates in some urban areas could be based, not on individuals' characteristics, but on the diminished capacity of residents of those areas to act collectively in order to solve problems such as crime. These inner-city communities were influenced by certain macro-social forces, including increasing urban population sizes, on the one hand, and rapid turnover as a result of migration from rural areas and rising immigration, on the other. Shaw and McKay (1942: 20) hypothesized that the accompanying low economic status, high levels of residential mobility, frequent residential moves, and ethnic heterogeneity of these areas led to social disorganization by undermining formal and informal community ties, by decreasing communication, and by increasing anonymity among residents (Bursik and Grasmick 1993: 7). Thus, communities with high levels of social disorganization lacked the capacity to manage the behaviour of residents through formal and informal social control mechanisms.

Sampson (2006: 49-50) has recently pointed out that most or all of the research that relies on social disorganization theory has failed to distinguish between two different types of possible criminogenic effects of social disorganization: situational...