No community in Canada comes into conflict with criminal justice system officials more disproportionately than Aboriginals (Dickson-Gilmore, 2011, p.77). Indeed, Aboriginal Canadians are often subject to both overt and unintended discrimination from Canadian law enforcement due in large part to institutionalized reputations as chronic substance abusers who are incapable of reform (Dickson-Gilmore, 2011, p.77-78). One of the more startling contemporary examples of this is the case of Frank Paul; a Mi’kmaq Canadian who was left to die in a Vancouver alley by officers of the Vancouver Police Department after being denied refuge in a police “drunk tank”. Not surprisingly, this event garnered significant controversy and public outcry amongst Canada’s Aboriginal population who have long been subject to over-policing and persistent overrepresentation as offenders in the Canadian criminal justice system (Jiwani & Dickson-Gilmore, 2011, p.43 & 81).
Background
Paul was arrested on December 6, 1998 for public intoxication (Davies, 2011). After being brought to the VPD detachment, Paul was refused entry into detox holding cell by Sgt. Russell Sanderson and was instead ordered to be released. Subsequently, Paul was left in an alley in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside by Cst. David Instant where Paul eventually succumbed to hypothermia. A criminal investigation was conducted into the actions of the two police officers and it was ruled that they not be held criminally responsible (Davies, 2009). The resulting backlash from Canada’s Aboriginal community served as an impetus to analyze the events surrounding Paul’s death with greater scrutiny.
The Inquiry
At the behest of Solicitor General John Les, an inquiry was launched in February o...
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...between Aboriginals and Canadian criminal justice.
References
Davies, W.H. (2009). Alone and cold: The Davies commission. Inquiry into the Death of Frank
Paul. Interim Report. Retrieved from: http://www.straight.com/files/pdf/DaviesCommissionInterimReport021209.pdf
Davies, W.H. (2011). Alone and cold: The Davies commission. Inquiry into the Response of the
Criminal Justice Branch. Final Report. Retrieved from:
http://lailayuile.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/daviescommission-finalreport-june-16- 2011.pdf
Dickson-Gilmore, J. (2011). Diversity, Crime and Justice in Canada. Don Mills, Ontario: Oxford
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Jiwani, Y. (2011). Diversity, Crime and Justice in Canada. Don Mills, Ontario: Oxford
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Perry, B. (ed.). (2011). Diversity, Crime and Justice in Canada. Don Mills, Ontario: Oxford
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Toronto: Pearson Prentice Hall. The Justice System and Aboriginal People: Child Welfare. n.d. - n.d. - n.d. The Aboriginal Justice Implementation Commission. Retrieved December 12, 2013, from http://www.ajic.mb.ca/volumel/chapter14.html.
The Canadian justice system, although much evolved, is having difficulty eliminating bias from the legal system. Abdurahman Ibrahim Hassan, a 39 year old man, died on June 11 in a Peterborough hospital, while under immigration detention. He came to Canada in 1993 as a refugee and was suffering from mental, and physical health issues such as diabetes and bipolar disorder. There was an overwhelming amount of secrecy surrounding the death of this troubled Toronto man, and to this day no light has been shed on this tragedy. (Keung, 2015) An analysis of the official version of the law will reveal how race class and gender coincide with the bias within the legal system.
The Effectiveness of the Law in Achieving Justice for Indigenous People In relation to Australia, the term ‘Indigenous peoples’ refers to two distinct cultures of people who inhabited the land prior to European settlement – The Aboriginals and the Torres Strait Islanders. This population declined dramatically over the 19th and early 20th century due to the introduction of new diseases from European settlement, Government policies of dispersal and dispossession, the era of protection, assimilation and integration causing a cultural disruption and disintegration of the Indigenous peoples. In the 20th century the recognition and protection of Indigenous peoples land rights and human rights have been at the forefront of Global Issues where the International community has sought to address the issues and ratify Human Rights and Land Rights for Indigenous People as a legitimate subject to be implemented into international law and the domestic law of member states such as Australia. To evaluate the effectiveness of the law in achieving justice for Indigenous Australians we must look at the Australian Legal System, and the extent to which it addresses it’s obligations to International Law in relation to Australia’s
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In the video “Aboriginal Peoples -- It's time”, the main topic of the video is advocating for equity and justice for the aboriginal people. Aboriginal people is a collective name for the original peoples of North America and their descendants. The Canadian constitution recognizes three groups of Aboriginal peoples: Indians (commonly referred to as First Nations), Métis and Inuit. These are three distinct peoples with unique histories, languages, cultural practices and spiritual beliefs. More than 1.4 million people in Canada identify themselves as an Aboriginal person, according to the 2011
In the article “Point: Racial Profiling in Law Enforcement is Unjust”, Adele Cassola determines that racial profiling is an extensive problem in policing across Canada. She identifies that racial profiling is based on stereotypes of race, ethnicity, and cultural background with African-Canadians, Arab-Canadians, and Aboriginal Canadians being targeted most frequently. Racial profiling is not unique to law enforcement and immigration, Cassola asserts, “it is a wide spread problem within other institutions and establishments as well” (2009). She discovered a survey that showed Toronto's African-Canadian secondary school students were stopped four times more frequently and searched six times more frequently than their non-black classmates. In an article from the Toronto Star newspaper in 2002, Cassola notes that African-Canadians were subject...
Ford, Richard. “Introduction” in : Yates, R., Revolutionary Road, (2001 edition), Methuen Publishing Ltd, London.
trial of two men for the 1971 murder of Helen Betty Osborne in The Pas Manitoba.
Richard Wright: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1984. Rampersad, Arnold, ed., pp. 113-117. Richard Wright: A Collection of Critical Essays.
Comack, E. (2012). Racialized policing: Aboriginal people's encounters with the police. Black Point, Nova Scotia: Fernwood Publishing.
Griffiths, C. T. (2007). Canadian Criminal Justice: A Primer (3rd Edition ed.). Toronto: Thomson Nelson.
Compare and contrast the arguments that have been advanced for and against the incorporation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Law in the criminal justice system.
The system in place is completely unsuitable and unhelpful for Native people and it shows just how indifferent Canada is to First Nations peoples’ well-being. Zimmerman explains in his article “Outcomes” that it is a well-known fact that Aboriginal people are overrepresented in the prison system (1992). There are so many reasons why this is so, and the majority of those reasons are because of the terrible way that Canada has interacted with them. They are isolated in their reserves, they are haunted by their residential school experiences, leading to alcoholism, domestic violence and neglect, and they face discrimination and a lack of social support from the government. Once an Aboriginal person finds themselves in the clutches of the prison system, the indifference begins. Canada’s criminal justice system is indifferent to an Aboriginal person’s cultural, spiritual, and individual needs that separate them from the average convicted person (Zimmerman, 1992). The criminal justice system ignores the unique idea of justice and restoration that First Nations peoples have, making it extremely irrelevant and unhelpful for them. First Nations peoples have linguistic and cultural barriers and a lack of counsel and understanding of the criminal processes and, therefore, have misguided rulings and inaccurate proceedings. Canada has not provided the cultural training and
The symbol of the Canadian judicial system is the balanced scales of justice. When a wrongful act is committed, the scales of justice are greatly misplaced and require a solution to counterbalance the crime and restore balance. Additionally, the scales represent the idea that law should be viewed objectively and the determination of innocence should be made without bias. The Canadian criminal justice system encapsulates the idea of the scale of justice, to control crime and impose penalties on those who violate the law. One of the most important aspects of this system is that an individual charged with a criminal offence is presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. The current system has two prevailing methods involved in the process of dealing with crime: Retributive and restorative justice. This paper will analyze aspects of retributive justice and restorative justice, with reference to their respective philosophies, for the purpose of finding which is more effective at achieving justice and maintaining balance.
Flame into Being: The Life and Work of D. H. Lawrence (Heinemann, London 1985) Anthony Burgess, p 205