from Vancouver Sun

It's an embarrassing reality: Aboriginal faces are far too numerous in Canada's penitentiaries.

As Corrections Canada notes on its website, aboriginals, representing three per cent of the Canadian population, make up 17 per cent of the prison roster. In some Prairie prisons, aboriginals are more than 60 per cent of inmates.

In British Columbia, according to a 2006 government report, aboriginal youth are seven times more likely to be incarcerated than non-aboriginals. Moreover, recidivism rates are a lot higher for aboriginal offenders.

A lot of this relates to fetal alcohol syndrome, learning disabilities or childhoods marred by poverty and abuse. None of it reflects a new problem and Ottawa has been trying to find solutions since the early 1990s, when an aboriginal issues branch was first established in the Corrections department.

It mandated inclusion of elders and aboriginal liaison officers in administering justice as well as creation of minimum-security healing lodges and community sentencing circles.

These days, courts take into account the 1999 landmark Supreme Court ruling known as Gladue, requiring judges to give special consideration when sentencing aboriginals.

Such considerations, which tap into the community and cultural traditions of the aboriginal offenders, are proving to be strongly positive influences, according to Corrections Canada's own website.

But the Conservative government's recent omnibus crime bill, featuring harsher sentencing, can only mean greater challenges for those trying to address the disproportionate number of incarcerated aboriginals.

So, it's more than surprising that a 13-year-old Vancouver group, working for better aboriginal outcomes on the Corrections front, now finds itself issuing a plea to have its $186,000 in federal funding preserved.

The Aboriginal Transformative Justice Services Society in Vancouver earlier this month sent a memo to the country's aboriginal leaders, warning that a funding cut for the government's aboriginal justice strategy "will have a devastating impact on the ability of aboriginal communities to provide critical justice ser-vices to offenders and victims across the country."

The strategy, it says, "has been absolutely critical in our efforts to address the disproportionate number of aboriginal people, including a high number of youth, currently in the criminal justice system."

Shawn Atleo, national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, wrote to Indian Affairs Minister Rob Nicholson last Monday demanding the funding be restored, and increased.

The feds last year spent about $12 million on 257 restorative justice pro-grams across the country.

Because there has been no word on the future of the funding "many key programs are now beginning to shut their doors," said Christine Smith, director of the Vancouver transformative justice group.

An Angus Reid poll released Thurs-day revealed that nearly 70 per cent of Canadians favour alternative penalties to prison - fines, probation or community service - for all non-violent offenders. Just 19 per cent believe the prison system does a good job of helping prisoners become law abiding.

Certainly in an era of government cost-cutting, there are government programs and services that will have to be sacrificed in the name of deficit busting.

But does it make sense to cut spending on programs for the neediest among us, programs deemed by the government itself to be successful?

"We certainly care about this," said Julie Di Mambro, a spokesman for the justice minister. She said an announcement would be made "very soon" but would not confirm future funding.

At a time when cabinet minister Bev Oda is busy upgrading her overseas hotels and contracting pricey limos, you've sure got to wonder about federal spending priorities.