Section 1. General Introduction

1.1 Context

Black communities in Canada continue to experience forms of discrimination despite their countless efforts and outcries for justice. Reported issues of Black people being overrepresented in Canada’s criminal justice system has brought forth another call for the mobilizing of Black voices to understand ways of identifying, reducing, and preventing negative and frequent encounters with the criminal justice system.

Canada’s Black Justice Strategy seeks to address anti-Black racism, systemic discrimination, and overrepresentation from Black populations in the criminal justice system. As a part of the strategy, a framework will combine all existing research, reports, and expert engagements from within Black communities and organizations. The consultation process used to inform the strategy’s Framework will be community-led where the experiences and recommendations from the community voices will highlight any gaps in Canadian or provincial-level policies, legislation, data, services, initiatives, programs, and community supports.

This report presents the results of a survey and consultation on how community members, participants, and partners of DESTA experience Canadian law enforcement as a means to target and reduce anti-Black racism in their communities. The study is commissioned by Canada’s Black Justice Strategy and conducted by DESTA and BCRC staff.

1.2 About the Organization

Based and rooted in the heart of Montreal’s historically Black neighborhood, Little Burgundy, DESTA (Dare Every Soul to Achieve) Black Community Network is a community organization that has served Quebec’s Black population for 17 years. The organization was originally mandated to support Black youth in Little Burgundy with employability needs, but soon expanded its programming focus to addressing the systemic and personal barriers that exist within the challenges of securing employment, such as social justice, housing, and access to sustainable resources.

Today, DESTA is known for supporting the Black communities throughout Quebec with their economic needs, providing various levels of support in education, entrepreneurship, employability and prison to community reintegration and advocacy. The organization continues to provide on-site training, community events, and workshops that encourage the building of community knowledge and capacity in mental health tools and practices, financial security, food security, and other sustainable life practices.

As an active member of the Association des services de rehabilitation sociale du Québec (ASRSQ), DESTA’s re-entry and advocacy programming works directly with incarcerated individuals to support their successful reintegration back into community through holistic and evidence-based approaches. Through its partnership with various community organizations and professionals in Montreal and throughout the province of Quebec, DESTA’s re-entry and advocacy programming offers all program recipients legal counsel and consultations, support in finding and securing affordable housing, interpretation and translation of documents, parole terms advising, employment and work skills training, resources for family reunification support, and support with any grievances through trauma-informed counseling. Its efforts of advocacy are used in the informing of the program’s public campaigns.

Prison to community re-entry is considered successful when a program recipient has adopted a sustainable, agentive, and pro social lifestyle and identity. However, a core component of successful re-entry is community awareness and knowledge that support in breaking the stigma against individuals with criminal histories so that they might achieve and maintain the mentioned lifestyle and identity adoption. In many cases, the community or family members of those exiting incarceration will have little knowledge of the various barriers, challenges and needs to support loved ones inside or upon release. Additionally, the general public and governing officials may not have insight into the systemic nature of incarceration and mass supervision and punishment.

For this reason, DESTA’s re-entry and advocacy program contributes to community public discourse through its Know Your Rights Campaign (KYR). The campaign is an online and in-person discussion panel that promotes legal knowledge through interpersonal conversions about interactions with police and the carceral system to empower the Black community with resources of information. KYR has also piloted the Black Legal Action Fund that collects funds for program recipients’ legal needs. The campaign invites both families and justice professionals to participate in the discourse.

Another focused form of advocacy done by the re-entry and advocacy team is within its organized showcases on Black history within several federal prison institutions in Quebec. Black history is presented to those incarcerated through therapeutic writing sessions, talent shows and comedy. The intention of the showcases is to help those incarcerated gain confidence in themselves through the use of writing as a means of expression, to create positive dialogue while sharing the history of Black people’s contributions made to society and to inspire those imprisoned through self-expression and reflection.

The focus of DESTA’s re-entry and advocacy program is facilitating the access to community services, family contact and the personal development of those imprisoned. The program recipient demographics are majority Black males, ranging from the ages of 20 to 50 years old and within Quebec’s Cowansville prison. The program has participants from all 10 institutions in the Quebec region. The program presently serves 45 participants with an active waiting list. While some of the program recipients are serving life sentences, most are seeking parole and the remainder are recently released from long-term incarceration and reintegrating back into community. For those released from incarceration, DESTA’s re-entry and advocacy program currently facilitates Escorted Temporary Access (ETA) for 10 individuals within two Quebec prison institutions, Federal Training Center Minimum and Archambault Minimum.