Suggested actions
The following are the suggested actions that came out of the focus groups and online surveys of Black groups and individuals across the province. They include targeted, social, community and system-level actions:
(1) Targeted actions
- Participants suggested that creating, funding, and sustaining a specialized pan-Canadian Black Youth Gang Initiative that emphasizes positive contact, early interventions, and patriotic citizenship among youth can help reduce early contact of Black young individuals with the criminal justice system.
- Participants suggested that developing and implementing mandatory, Black-focused cultural competency training for criminal justice system employees, including police, Crown prosecutors, judges, community peace officers, and parole officers will help promote the required cultural shift within the system regarding racial profiling and stereotype.
- Participants believed that diversifying and improving community policing and alternative conflict resolution and restorative justice initiatives with emphasis on Black representation in the administration of these initiatives can help reduce overrepresentation of Black people in the system.
- Participants further suggested implementing measures to address overrepresentation of Black people in the criminal justice system requires a coordinated effort between criminal justice stakeholders and the Black community. This measure includes exploring and investigating alternative approaches to handling administration of justice offences that often disproportionately impact Black people.
- Participants believed that establishing, funding, and sustaining Black Legal Clinics across Canada, in collaboration with Black legal professionals and community, can facilitate an improved and equitable access to appropriate legal representation and resources. Participants expressed that existing Legal Aid arrangements do not adequately address the vulnerability of Black people requiring justice services.
(2) Social actions
- Participants suggested that creating specialized employment pathways for qualified Black professionals can help improve access to equitable and fair employment and promotion and foster social acceptance and sense of belonging of Black professionals. This will include supporting Black businesses and developing tools and processes to remove bias and discrimination from the recruitment process.
- Participants believed that enhanced funding for supports and services for new immigrants and newcomers to include social expectations and legal education will help minimize the accusation of sexual harassment that had brought many newcomers in contact with the law. Participants mentioned cases of many male newcomers who have been accused of sexual harassment due to lack of awareness of cultural dimension of their new environment.
- Participants suggested that increased funding of Black led organizations will improve the delivery of social programs and services to Black people and help to feel socially, culturally, and economically included in the community.
- Participants suggested that developing mental health framework with a science and evidence-based perspective that accounts for historical-cultural dimensions of Black people in Canada can help provide proper culturally-sensitive resources for Black people living with mental health issues as they face the criminal justice system.
- Participants suggested that investment in education programs that provide Black youth with opportunities to thrive, including youth camp and leadership opportunities, will help with the prevention and management of youth crises, encourage civic duties, and increase system awareness prior to any contact with law enforcement.
(3) Community actions
“I lost a sister to violent crime; the perpetrator was white, and her case was stayed without her ever stepping a foot in the court.”
- Participant suggested the need for Black community to look inward and work toward a rallying point for Black issues in the province and beyond. Participants believed that a reflective approach that identifies critical issues faced by the community; evaluates/re-evaluates current approaches and promotes working together towards a common goal is an important part of the solution to an enduring Black justice strategy in Canada.
- Participants suggested the need for an increased intra-community mental health awareness that promotes early diagnoses and intervention, de-emphasizes stigmatization, unlearns some unorthodox belief about mental health issues, facilitates open and safe knowledge sharing, and encourages community support.
- Participants believed that an intra-community enlightenment is required to encourage a major shift from a “victim mentality” even with the existence of real and perceived racism that exists in the criminal justice and the larger systems.
- Participants suggested the need for Black communities to lobby governments at different levels–municipal, province and federal–to allocate more resources for community members with extra social barriers, including people living with mental health, LGBTQ communities, minority faith groups, and refugees.
(4) System-level actions
- Participants suggested that addressing systemic racism requires a multi-sectoral, multifaceted approach that integrates child welfare services, newcomers’ supports, employment services, and gender-based analysis–an overall social justice lens that accounts for intersectionality within the Black community and acknowledges that vulnerability is based on the disadvantaged positioning of one’s identity.
- Participants suggested that governments at all levels must promote active and sustained public enlightenment on the culture, language, and history of Saskatchewan Black communities, and how historical balances have been tilted against them. Some participants believed that such enlightenment need to include a focus on social acceptance by the mainstream community who find it difficult to recognize Black community as part of the Saskatchewan community. Such intervention can help reduce the occurrences of false reports to police, false witness testimonies, and general assumptions that Black people are connected to criminal activities.
- Participants suggested the need for a unifying body at the national level similar to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in the United States or some form of ombudsman-type agency that can lead policy advocacy and legal framework to advance the interests of Black people in Canada.
- Participants spoke to the need for increased funding of academic research that rigorously theorizes, reflects on, and engage with the experiences of Black people in Canada to generate knowledge and insight that can support community advancement and policy work.
- Participants suggested the importance of institutionalizing the use of Black-specific cultural impact statements for sentencing purposes. Such policy would require sentencing judges to consider systemic and background factors of the offender, and the types of sentencing procedures and sanctions that are appropriate in the circumstances– something comparable to Gladue report for Indigenous offenders to consider the social determinants of crime for the accused.
- Participants believe that disaggregated data collection that isolates each ethnicity and is made accessible to the public is essential to support evidence-based policy work and promote transparency and accountability in the criminal justice system.
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