Gladue reports receive provincial funding

Aboriginal offenders now face a better chance of receiving a court sentence that fits their personal circumstances.

In April, the provincial government announced that it would provide $200,000 to Native Counselling Services of Alberta to coordinate and undertake Gladue Reports. Gladue Reports were created as a result of a Supreme Court of Canada decision in 1999 and further enforced in the Ipeelee decision two years ago. Courts can request Gladue reports when sentencing first time offenders, repeat offenders and dangerous offenders of Aboriginal background.

“The misnomer is that the interpretation of Gladue is a get-out-of-jail-free card or a reduced sentence. I think what’s important for people to understand is that is not the case at all. If a Gladue report is done properly and it’s interpreted properly by a sentencing judge, a sentence will be appropriate to the person’s historic background, to the crime and matching that to public safety,” said Dr. Allen Benson, CEO for Native Counselling Service of Alberta.

Presently Gladue reports are not written in a specific format and are implemented sporadically. There is no specified funding available to pay writers and more importantly, they are not necessarily prepared by Aboriginal people. Instead, reports are undertaken by probationary officers, court workers or other members of the Justice department.

“It’s important to have either Aboriginal people or someone who has extensive knowledge of historic trauma, intergenerational trauma and understanding of community in order to articulate the circumstances of an accused,” said Benson.

The funding commitment from the province is an indication that the government is “seriously concerned about the over-representation (of Aboriginal people in the corrections system) and I believe there’s a real commitment on the part of this province to change that,” said Benson.

NCSA has now been tasked with coordinating and managing Gladue reports, which will include hiring and training people to specifically write the reports. While NCSA is based in Edmonton, the organization will be putting writers in place throughout the province.

Benson admits that $200,000 will probably not be sufficient for the work that has to be undertaken. He surmises the province reached the figure through determining the number of outstanding Gladue reports. However, Benson holds that once reporters are trained, sentencing judges will start demanding Gladue reports.

A Gladue report can be mandated as part of a court order based on a number of factors, which include a request from legal counsel, the accused’s family, court worker or by the individual, if he is representing himself. While requesting a Gladue report is left to a judge’s discretion, in Ipeelee, the Supreme Court said that sentencing could be overturned if an offender’s circumstances were not taken into consideration.

Benson believes strongly that most of the province’s judges would support Gladue.

“In all fairness to the courts, Alberta … is probably one of the more progressive provinces when it comes to administering our justice system. So I think we’re in a position where we might actually see a significant impact on Gladue because I believe the sentencing judges want the resource available to them,” he said.
Having Gladue reports available for sentencing will have an impact.

“I believe that the sentencing judges will have a tremendous sort of revisit or change of how they might sentence an accused,” said Benson.

Instead of the usual sentencing, judges may now involve cultural and traditional means as part of a probationary order. Families may also need to be involved in treatments. For Gladue reports to be effective, says Benson, additional resources will be required.
“Healing work is harder than jail time and anybody who believes that going to therapy or healing or doing their cultural healing, is easy time, it’s not. It’s hard work,” he said. “It means that people now have to face their histories and be able to deal with those things in a way that is going to be healing so they can move forward.”

Instead of dwelling on the limited amount of funding received to undertake the tasks associated with Gladue reports, NCSA will begin to roll out its Gladue writing program and do a monthly assessment of how far the funding has gone.

While there are no figures available presently to indicate how many Aboriginal offenders are being provided with Gladue reports, Benson says he believes the number is low. The provincial funding will now allow NCSA to determine how much work has to be done in order to meet the needs of Aboriginal offenders.

NCSA will track the cases it is involved in to see the impact Gladue reports have had on sentencing. Benson says the next step would be for the province to set up a process for comparisons to previous years.