This data is important to justice community and other sectors, they said
Statistics Canada and the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police have committed to work together to advance the improvement of the collection and reporting of statistics on Indigenous and ethno-cultural groups in police-reported crime data on victims and accused individuals.
They will also work alongside key stakeholders and organizations to identify ways to enable police to provide reliable and quality statistics. This information is more in demand than ever and particularly beneficial to the justice community, said the two organizations.
“Disaggregated data is vital for decision making in multiple sectors,” said Anil Arora, Canada’s chief statistician.
For decades, many have brought up the importance of reporting such statistics, including the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls and organizations like the Canadian Race Relations Foundation.
“The need for quality data about the experience of Indigenous peoples and ethno-cultural communities with Canada’s criminal justice system is paramount to understanding the extent to which people from these communities are represented in Canada’s criminal justice system, beginning with their interactions with the police,” said Stu Betts, co-chairperson of the CACP’s Police Information and Statistics Committee and deputy chief of the London Police Service.
