For over 100 years, thousands of Aboriginal children passed through the Canadian residential school system. Although the system was meant to bring Aboriginal children into the "circle of civilization," the actual results were far different. More commonly, it provided an inferior education in an atmosphere of neglect, disease, and often - abuse.

Using access to previously unreleased government documents, Milloy provides a full picture of the ideological roots of the system, and follows the paper trails of internal memorandams, reports from field inspectors, and letters of complaint. In the early decades, the system grew without planning or restraint. Despite numerous critical commissions and reports, it persisted into the 1970s, when it transformed itself into a social welfare system without improving conditions for its thousands of wards.

A National Crime shows how the residential system was chronically underfunded and mismanaged, and how this affected the health, education, and well-being of entire generations of Aboriginal children.