No ready answers to justice system inequities
No one was denying the existence of systemic racism in Nova Scotia at a legislative community services committee meeting Tuesday.
But none of participants offered up much of a solution to rid the province of racism, especially as manifested in the Nova Scotia criminal justice system.
“This being Nova Scotia, we have lots of evidence that antiBlack racism has affected the social welfare of people of African descent,” Robert Wright, a Halifax social worker and a member of the African Nova Scotian Decade for People of African Descent Coalition, told the committee that was virtually addressing the overrepresentation of Blacks and Indigenous in the provincial criminal justice system.
That over-representation is borne out by numbers obtained from the Justice Department on Tuesday.
From April 1, 2019, to March 31, 2020, African Nova Scotians, despite making up only two per cent of the province's population, accounted for 10 per cent of the people remanded to adult correctional facilities in the province and 11 per cent of offenders sentenced.
During the same time period, Indigenous people accounted for 13 per cent of those remanded to adult correctional facilities and seven per cent of offenders sentenced. The Indigenous population is six per cent of the province's total.
“It seems at times that the systems that are responsible for our welfare double down on what are known to be racist practices and policies,” Wright said.
Wright used the Wortley report on street checks as an example of the doubling down.
“It was only after a couple of years of serious advocacy that the Wortley report was commissioned,” Wright said, despite African Nova Scotians and others talking for years about the deleterious effects of the checks and questioning the legality of the practice.
“Government did not aggressively pursue our concerns,” Wright said.
Continued lobbying of government, police, police oversight commissions and the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission were required before the Wortley report work was commissioned, Wright said.
“The Wortley report came back and found terrible problems with the street check issue and we advocated for a moratorium and the province would not establish a provincial moratorium until we refused to sit with them to discuss what we believed was an illegal and deleterious practice of police that was dramatically negatively affecting people of African descent.”
Subsequently, a Wortley report working group was struck to discuss how the street check practice might be changed, “a practice that was fundamentally illegal,” Wright said.
Eventually, an independent legal opinion on the legality of street checks was sought and the report from former chief justice Michael Macdonald found that the practice was illegal, Wright said.
“It was then that street checks were eradicated but the very day that the (Macdonald) opinion came out, the Department of Justice delivered a directive to police around what to do instead of street checks that we in the African Nova Scotian community still believe creates a practice of policing that is fundamentally illegal,” Wright said.
Wright said a replacement police practice supported and directed by government is a practice “we believe is illegal and is doubling down on the racist practices of policing that we have just spent several years fighting back.”
“It seems at times that the systems that are responsible for our welfare double down on what are known to be racist practices and policies.”
Robert Wright Member of the African Nova Scotian Decade for People of African Descent Coalition
Wright said he pioneered in the province a specialized presentence report called the impact of race and culture assessment, designed to give sentencing judges more information about Black persons being sentenced.
“It is an attempt to address the systemic racism in sentencing that results in the over-incarceration of people of African descent.
Wright said that Judge Pam Wright used the specialized presentence report last year in sentencing Rakeem Rayshon Anderson to a community sentence of two years less a day for five firearm-related charges.
“The public prosecution service appealed her decision, suggesting that the judge erred by giving what some would perceive as a light sentence,” Wright said.
That travesty, Wright said, is “more evidence that government, rather than ramping up its anti-racists policies and practices to address what we know to be this problem of systemic racism, government is doubling down on this practice of systemic racism.”
Emma Halpern, executive director of the Elizabeth Fry Society of Mainland Nova Scotia, told the committee that her society works intensely on 80 to 100 files a year of women and girls who require advocacy with multiple levels of government, housing programming and legal services.
“We have seen an increase in Indigenous and African Nova Scotians,” Halpern said. “About 40 per cent of our clients are African or Indigenous Nova Scotians.”
Halpern said she has seen an increase in rural clients and a decrease in the average age of clients engaged in the criminal justice system and that people are aging out of child services and into corrections.
Halpern said women, particularly Black and Indigenous, can be victimized twice in the same incident.
“When police arrive on scene, when there is an issue that has occurred, we see young women and girls identified as ‘part of the problem,' being criminalized for small things rather than being recognized for what is actually going on, which is tremendous victimization and trauma.”
Candace Thomas, the deputy justice minister, touted restorative justice programs, a Wortley report research committee and funding provided for biasfree police training as positive steps.
“Nova Scotia has a long, painful history of anti-black, anti-indigenous racism, only some of which is reported,” Thomas said. “We acknowledge at the Department of Justice that much remains to be done. We are actively working across government.”
Wright said he has worked with many well-intentioned people in government, policing and corrections.