Pandemic era impacts on provisional federal population forecasts

Research Highlights: Pandemic era impacts in 10-year federal population forecasts were manifested for men, women, and across regions.

The Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) regularly refreshes its provisional federal institutional and community population examined in 2017-18 and found to be reflective of observed counts with very narrow margins of error (<1%).^{Footnote 1},^{Footnote 2} In any population forecasting exercise, a major assumption is that things will remain the same, they rarely do. Over the course of two fiscal years (2020-21 and 2021-22), marked by the COVID-19 pandemic, CSC exhibited unprecedented declines in the in-custody (-1,392 or 10.1%) and community supervision (-903 or 9.6%) populations.^{Footnote 3} The following provides an update on new 10-year population estimates to fiscal year-end 2031-32.

A forecasting database of weekly snapshots of institutional and community supervision counts from 1990-91 to 2021-22 was derived from CSC's Offender Management System. The historical time series in-custody and community supervision populations were used to develop provisional scenarios for men and women to 2031-32. Again, projections for men and women were estimated separately, as historical trends for these two groups differ.

SAS/ETS software was used for exploring and analyzing univariate time series data and to select the best-fitting model. Computing estimates for each security level across the five administrative regions of CSC added precision by taking into account variations that occur over time with these sub-populations.

Federal in-custody population forecasts are taken to the last Tuesday midnight institutional count of the fiscal year. In testing the forecasting model over the last seven fiscal years (2015-16 to 2021-22), the national and regional counts were found to be reflective of the end-of year forecasts with very low margins of error (-0.26 to 0.25%).

As reflected in the table below, for men in-custody on 29 March 2022, the actual count was reported to be 11,617. For fiscal year-end 2031-32, the 10-year forecast for men is estimated to be 12,291. For women, the actual custody count in 2022 was reported to be 589 and the 10-year forecast for 2032 is estimated to be 677. For men the 10-year forecast difference of +674 or 5.8% is a substantially lower percentage than for women at +88 or +14.9%.

Also displayed below, for men under community supervision on 29 March 2022, the actual count was reported to be 7,859. For fiscal year-end 2031-32, the 10-year community forecast for men is estimated to be 7,349, a decline. On the other hand, for women the actual community count in 2022 was reported to be 644 and the 10-year forecast is estimated to be 649. For men, the 10-year forecast difference of -510 or -6.5% is a substantially higher percentage than for women at +5 or +0.8%.

While the national 10-year custody forecast being higher than the current institutional count was expected, it appears that the in-custody population will not return to pre-pandemic levels for more than a decade. However, the national community supervision count currently being higher than the end-of year national forecast is surprising and reflective of significant declines of both the custody and community populations exhibited during the pandemic.

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Prepared by: Larry Motiuk and Ben Vuong