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Aboriginal Youth Issues

753 Words4 Pages

Indigenous youth have not found their place in the world. Their pasts are lost to them due to colonialism and their futures are vague and not promising. As a former Indigenous youth I can attest to the despair that one feels when there seem to be little to no options left to you. Various Canadian studies indicate that Aboriginal youth are overrepresented at every stage of the criminal justice process. In many jurisdictions, the proportion of Aboriginal youth in custody far outstrips their representation within the overall population. As a result, critics charge that the criminal justice system fails to meet the needs of these youth (A One Day, 2015).

Women and youth fare the worst when it comes to the Canadian justice system. Many Indigenous …show more content…

Lack of education, poverty, unemployment and abuse all lead to higher crime rates. Also, statistically, Aboriginals have a greater chance of conviction and subsequently, incarceration once convicted. What is needed is for the government to publicly address the critical numbers of Indigenous peoples in the Canadian justice system. Acknowledging that there is a problem is the first step to addressing this issue, up to this point the government has blithely pushed aside the problem from government agency to government …show more content…

It was at this time that girls started to go missing on the streets I haunted. We never thought much of it at the time; girls were always going somewhere: home, jail or a group home. It wasn’t until Leah that everything changed. The Prince George Friendship Centre had a Christmas party for the street kids that year. My close friend Leah was there. I had a flap (a point) of heroin and asked her if she wanted to share it with me. She said no. This was an odd answer. No street kid ever said no to free drugs. She went on to tell me that she was going to go straight and get clean. She asked me if I would walk her to the bar 4 blocks away. The man I was with at the time said I couldn’t go, that he wanted us to go home. So I said good bye to her and watched her walk away on George Street. You never think that you are seeing someone for the last

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