Justice system failing Aboriginals - symposium

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When the Task Force on the Criminal Justice System released the Justice on Trial Report in 1991, its chief recommendation was to bring a criminal justice system back to the Native and Metis communities of Alberta.

But most of the task forces recommendations are yet to become reality, participants heard at the recent Aboriginal Justice Symposium held at the Enoch Cree Nation.

The task force was struck to investigate the near-epidemic proportion of Aboriginal people being incarcerated in provincial institutions. It produced 342 recommendations aimed specifically at re-working the justice system to make it more sensitive to the needs and the ways of Aboriginal people.

This would be achieved, in part, by including Aboriginals in the decision making process at all levels of the Justice system, having more Elder involvement, and changing the system's over-all focus to rehabilitation rather than incarceration. Only then, the task force said, could the inequities and hardships faced by so many Aboriginals caught up in the system be rectified.

While modified versions of some of the recommendations contained within the report have been implemented in the ensuing years, the majority of the recommendations have not. And according to Sylvia Novik, director of Native Justice Initiatives of the Alberta Department of Justice in Edmonton, it could be some time before the rest of the recommendations are realized.

"In order to proceed further, money is required," Novik said at the two-day symposium. "No new funding has been allocated to the project," she said, and that makes it difficult to proceed in the current economic climate.

Progress limited

Novik said the department is committed to implementing the remaining recommendations, but progress will be limited to the availability of resources. She said the department is pleased with the successful implementation of recommendations which led to the establishment of police forces on the Siksika, Blood and Louis Bull reserves, Aboriginal awareness training by the police, and the formation of Native youth justice committees. Even so, Novik admits that these initiatives alone have not been enough to slow the troubling influx of Aboriginal people into the criminal justice system. "In fact," she said, "the numbers continue to increase."

According to task force member Cynthia Bertolin, the percentage of Aboriginal people in Alberta jails has risen five per cent since the report's release, and it shows no sign of slowing. This is reason enough for the government to hasten the implementation of the report's recommendations.

"Aboriginal people make up three to five per cent of Albertans," she said. "Aboriginal people make up 35% of the inmate population. That 35% represents actual people, actual Aboriginal and Metis males, females and youth."

Bertolin charged that the criminal justice system is failing Aboriginal people, and blasted the government for the lack of funding. She said the financial and human costs of incarceration far outweigh cost of implementing the recommendations.

"The government has to understand and accept that we have to plan for longer than four years at a time," she said.

Long-term goals

Bertolin told the 350 audience members that the report's recommended long-term goals of having Aboriginal control over the institutions of justice like policing, courts, and treatment centres, is within reach.

"But the Aboriginal people have to understand that the onus to make this happen is on them."

Lethbridge-based Chief Crown prosecutor Jim Langston agreed that major changes need to be made to the existing justice system. He told the audience initiatives started by his office, including sending people into Aboriginal communities to ferret out the problems and discern needs, are a step in the right direction.

"Before we do anything in terms of structural change, we'd better bloody well understand what the community's need's are," he said.

Holistic views

Langstonsaid that the courts need to take a more holistic view of crimes like domestic violence by providing support services for batterers as well as the victims, and that a new methodology was needed for dispute resolutions. He cited examples of new methods that appear to be working, such as the Peigan's use of circle sentencing, and Native RCMP in Brocket who don't charge people with criminal offense if an alternative, such as community service work is available.

"The only thing stopping (this type of initiative) today is what we are jointly afraid of," he said. "Your society is afraid to take the next step and my society is afraid to give up control."

Alberta Court of Queen's Bench Justice Alan T. Cook spoke of how initiatives such as cross-cultural training, rotating rosters and Elder input in sentencing has benefited the Aboriginal people in remote places like High Level.

"I'm convinced that a significant improvement has been made to make it a less alienable experience for Native people to sit in court," he said.

But Larry Chartrand, director of the Indigenous Law Program at the University of Alberta, is skeptical that the rest of the recommendations will ever see the light of day. Chartrand, a self-appointed reality-checker, dismissed the government's no-funding explanation, calling it a smoke-screen.

"I question the extent to which the government is serious about this report," he said. Chartrand pointed to the vast systematic changes that are required to revamp the justice, which has yet to be addressed.

"With respect to that, I don't see much initiative." he said. Chartrand touched on what he called glaring problems within legal aid, plus a lack of government commitment to recommended programs for Aboriginal young offenders. He also questioned the impact

of having rotating rosters - in the event that a sympathetic justice was replaced by an unsympathetic one.

"The community can't do anything about that," he said.

Novik, however, said it is too difficult t measure the impact that any of these recommendations may have on Native and Metis community thus far. She added that implementation in itself is not the answer.

"The key is a partnership between government and the Aboriginal people," she said. "And I think History has shown that government cannot do it on its own."