The Aboriginal Justice Inquiry (AJI), officially the Public Inquiry into the Administration of Justice and Aboriginal People, was a public inquiry commissioned by the Manitoba government into the administration of justice regarding the 1971 murder of Helen Betty Osborne and 1988 death of J.J. Harper. Commissioned in 1988, with its final report presented in 1991, its stated purpose was "to examine the relationship between the Aboriginal peoples of Manitoba and the justice system." The Commission of Inquiry was composed of Alvin Hamilton, former Associate Chief Justice of Manitoba of the Court of Queen's Bench, and Murray Sinclair, then-Associate Chief Judge of the Provincial Court and former Justice of the Court of Queen's Bench. To develop a plan to act upon the Inquiry's recommendations, the Aboriginal Justice Implementation Commission was created in late November 1999. Background and overview At the time of the inquiry, Manitoba had the highest proportion of Aboriginal people in its population among the 10 provinces of Canada. (In 1996, Manitoba's population of 1.1 million included about 77,500 First Nations residents and 57,000 Métis and Non-Status Indians.) Research carried out for the Inquiry on Provincial Court data revealed that: Aboriginal people constitute 11.8% of the Manitoba population, yet account for more than 50% of people in correctional institutions; Aboriginal males between 18 and 34 years old spend 1.5 times longer in pre-trial detention than other suspects; only 1 in 5 Aboriginal accused are successful in obtaining bail, compared to over half of non-Aboriginal defendants; and approximately 25% of Aboriginal persons received sentences that involve some degree of incarceration, compared to 10% of non-Aboriginal persons. The Inquiry was commissioned in 1988 in response to two high-profile incidents: the November 1987 trial of two men for the 1971 murder of Helen Betty Osborne in The Pas. Allegedly, the identity of four (non-Indigenous) people who were present at the murder was known widely in the community shortly after the killing. Although four people were present at the time of the killing, only one was convicted of a crime—which itself took 16 years. the March 1988 death of Island Lake Tribal Council executive director John Joseph Harper following an encounter with a Winnipeg Police officer, the internal investigation to which many people believed had left questions unanswered. With these in mind, the Commission of Inquiry's stated purpose was "to examine the relationship between the Aboriginal peoples of Manitoba and the justice system."