The report guides organizations intending to develop Black-focused justice frameworks
The Canadian Association of Black Lawyers has partnered with Nana Yanful and Reakash Walters on a new report entitled “Grasping at the Root: A look at Restorative and Transformative Justice for Black People in Canada,” which examines the execution of restorative and transformative justice processes and programs in Canada’s criminal legal system – and how these processes work against the system.
The report presents values, principles, and practices intended to guide groups and organizations looking to develop Black-focused restorative and transformative justice frameworks based on community care, self-determination, and non-carcerality.
“Africentric approaches to justice, deeply rooted in traditions across Africa and throughout the Diaspora, offer Black communities in Canada a framework for justice grounded in collectivity and community care. However, despite the presence and persistence of these practices, Canadian courts have failed to acknowledge that Black communities hold distinct perspectives of justice beyond the Western criminal legal system,” CABL said in an executive summary of the report.
The association pointed to the Ontario Court of Appeal’s 2021 decision to deny this recognition in R v Morris. CABL noted that many restorative justice programs in Canada run within and in alignment with the criminal legal system; nonetheless, such programs could repeat harmful patterns due to systemic anti-Black racism threaded into the system.
According to interviews conducted for the report, Black people often struggle to access restorative justice programs because of biases that color supposed offences as being either especially serious or less worthy of alternative solutions. Respondents also indicated that restorative justice programs focused on harm reparation rather than on tackling oppression and the core causes of the harm.
In the report, CABL made the following recommendations to steer the system away from criminalization and towards liberation:
- Develop restorative and transformative justice framework-focused, Black-led, and community-rooted justice pathways
- Broaden awareness, access, and community education
- Determine the material needs of those harmed
- Change systems through non-carceral reform
- Incorporate restorative and transformative justice in what the CABL called “organizational and everyday contexts”
The “Grasping at the Root: A look at Restorative and Transformative Justice for Black People in Canada” was financed by the Black Opportunities Fund. The CABL said that the report’s findings could be cited to back funding efforts for initiatives led by the Black community; they can also be applied by legal professionals towards championing restorative and transformative justice for clients.
The report findings can also inform diversion policies and practices, deepen the criminal legal system’s understanding of community-based alternatives to prosecution, and help judges, police, and crown attorneys to decide based on “culturally relevant approaches to safety, accountability, and healing,” CABL said.
The full report can be accessed here.
