Right-sized sentencing
There are days when the problems facing Canada’s Indigenous communities seem intractable.
We’ve all seen the stories: an epidemic of suicide among young people, poor housing and water quality, substance abuse, the residential schools scandal.
And that list doesn’t begin to approach the complex, troubling relationship between First Nations and the country’s justice system.
The National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, for instance, is examining how hundreds if not thousands of Indigenous women have been beaten, raped and murdered over decades with not nearly enough response from our police forces.
The testimony from that inquiry is dismaying, discouraging and overwhelmingly sad.
But there are glimmers of hope. This week, one such experiment was highlighted.
A Gladue court has been operating on Wagmatcook First Nation since April. To mark National Indigenous Peoples Day, the provincial government held a ceremony on Thursday to celebrate that fact.
Gladue courts take their name from a Supreme Court of Canada ruling that requires judges to take into account the unique circumstances faced by
Indigenous people facing criminal convictions.
These courts offer a different approach to sentencing. Indigenous offenders who plead guilty to less serious offences are given a chance at a kind of restorative justice, which usually means community members joining the accused in determining an appropriate penalty.
The impetus for Gladue courts is to address the overrepresentation of Indigenous people in our prisons and follows one of the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2015.
Placing the court on the reserve does away with the one-hour drive to Port Hawkesbury that was previously necessary for Wagmatcook residents.
It’s the second courthouse located on a reserve in Nova Scotia. Eskasoni, near Sydney, is the other.
Small experiments like a local courthouse offering a better way can pay off.
Let’s say you have to make a court appearance at a town an hour away from home. If you have no driver’s licence or access to a car, you’re risking a default judgment or an arrest warrant and you’re in much bigger trouble.
If instead you can walk to a local courthouse and get some community involvement with your legal problem, well, everyone benefits.
It’s one more thing that might bring us a bit closer together.