N.B. lawyer speaks on system reform to help Indigenous offenders

When he broke it down, Feist said he found Regina had about 10,396 new criminal charges per 100,000 people in 2015, based on the report and the latest available 2011 census. Saskatoon had 11,821 per 100,000 people. As for North Battleford, that number soared to 42,042.

“The rates in [the] La Ronge Judicial Centre in that report and the rates that are in Meadow Lake are far worse based on the population,” he said. “I calculated them, and if you adjusted per population there’s like almost double the trials, like every person gets charged basically, technically, with an offence in those cities. It’s crazy.”

The lawyer went to social media with his findings.

“It is pretty apparent that the areas of the province with the highest populations of Indigenous people also have the highest rates of charges and people going through the court system,” his Facebook post stated. “Saskatchewan currently has the highest rate of provincial imprisonment of Indigenous people of any province in Canada. Indigenous people make up approximately 15 per cent of our province’s population, but approximately 80 per cent of our provincial jail population.”

According to a 2015-2016 report from The Office of the Correctional Investigator, roughly one in four federal prisoners are Indigenous across the country, and roughly one in three in women’s correctional centres.

“I think people are aware that there are more criminal charges being laid in this part of the province,” Feist said. “Like North Battleford here, we have one of the highest RCMP budgets per capita of anywhere in the province too and that’s pretty easy to see on the basis of these statistics. There’s an argument there too, that kind of calls into question how heavily these populations are being policed in comparison to these other places and why we’re seeing such high charge rates in these areas, in the Battlefords here especially.”

North Battleford has the fifth highest policing budget in the province, behind Saskatoon, Regina, Prince Albert and Moose Jaw.

Senior Communications Consultant with the Saskatchewan Ministry of Justice, Noel Busse, said policing budgets are set municipally, usually based on crime rate and crime severity index. North Battleford currently sits atop the crime severity index, however some have criticized the index, saying it is not a perfect system.

There are currently some programs in place to help First Nation offenders, including Gladue, a sentencing principal which the Native Women’s Association of Canada describes as a “principal which recognizes that Aboriginal Peoples face racism and systemic discrimination in and out of the criminal law system.”

When appropriate, a judge may refer to Gladue to implement non-traditional criminal sentencing or rehabilitation to Indigenous peoples, taking into consideration cultural background, and systematic injustice which brought them to their crimes.

In a statement to battlefordsNOW, Busse said “The Ministry of Justice is working with First Nations and Métis organizations, the federal government, municipal governments, the courts, policing services and others to make the justice system more responsive to the needs and values of Aboriginal people and to reduce the over-representation of Aboriginal people in the criminal justice system as victims and offenders.”

Some of the proactive approaches Busse listed include community justice and restorative justice programs, The Aboriginal court worker program, urban Aboriginal crime prevention programs, Aboriginal family violence programs and therapeutic courts, including the Battlefords Domestic Violence Treatment Options Court.

Feist said these programs are a step in the right direction, but the system itself needs to be looked at.

“Finding ways to solve people from re-offending is what the system should try to be doing,” he said. “We frequently see people with serious alcohol problems. They become intoxicated and commit offences. So finding actual solutions to the causes of those crimes is what the system as a whole should be doing. Obviously that doesn’t fall on just the police or the courts or the prosecutors or the defense counsel. It falls on the system as a whole.”

He went on to say there are some local organizations working to curb these issues including the Battlefords Social Services and Battle River Treaty 6.

“It’s just a matter of finding ways to divert people away from those things that are causing offences, also finding some solutions to the issues of chronic poverty and chronic substance abuse on the First Nations that surround the city or just finding ways that we can actually create healthy communities,” he said. “Working with our Indigenous partners and our Indigenous governments in those areas to work collaboratively to solve some of those things I think is what is very important.”

-With files from Greg Higgins

katherine.svenkeson@jpbg.ca
Twitter @ksvenkeson

by Katherine Svenkeson

N.B. lawyer speaks on system reform to help Indigenous offenders

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