Youth and Adults in Correctional System

Last week, Statistics Canada published 2 releases dealing with correctional services: 

Youth correctional services, 2010/2011:

"On any given day in 2010/2011, there were about 14,800 young people aged 12 to 17 under the supervision of Canada's correctional system. Of these, just over 13,300 (90%) were under supervision in the community, usually on probation. The remaining 1,500 (10%) were in custody."

"The youth corrections rate per 10,000 population aged 12 to 17 has generally been on a downward trend in recent years. The 2010/2011 rate was 6% lower than in 2009/2010 and 12% lower than five years earlier."

"The number of young people in remand awaiting trial or sentencing outnumbered those in sentenced custody for the fourth consecutive year. Of the 1,500 young people in custody in 2010/2011, 54% (or 820 youth) were in remand, while 44% were in sentenced custody."

"Between 2009/2010 and 2010/2011, the rate of youth under community supervision fell 6%, while rates for those in sentenced custody and remand both declined 5%."

Adult correctional services, 2010/2011:

"On any given day in 2010/2011, there were about 38,000 adults in Canada's prisons. This was nearly 900 more than the year before, resulting in a 0.9% increase in the rate of incarceration per 100,000 adults."

"Adults serving a federal sentence of two years or more accounted for 36% of those in prison. Another 29% of adults were serving a provincial/territorial sentence of less than two years. The remaining 34% had been remanded to a provincial/territorial facility to await trial or sentencing."

"For the sixth year in a row, provincial/territorial custody facilities housed more adults in remand than in sentenced custody. Regardless, the rate of adults in remand was down 6% from the previous year, the first notable decline in over a decade."

"In contrast, the rate of adults serving sentences in provincial/territorial institutions rose 7% between 2009/2010 and 2010/2011, one of the few times this rate has increased since the early 1990s. The 2010/2011 rate of adults serving sentences in federal prisons also rose from the year before, up 3%."

"An additional 125,000 adult offenders were under community supervision, usually on probation, on any given day in 2010/2011."

"Following a period of decline throughout the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s, the rate of offenders on probation has remained relatively stable."