Work still needed years after landmark ruling on Indigenous sentencing: lawyers
VANCOUVER — Nearly two decades after a landmark court decision on sentencing Indigenous offenders, lawyers say there are no national standards for implementing the ruling and too many Aboriginal people are still behind bars.
The Supreme Court of Canada’s Gladue decision in 1999 said judges must take note of systemic or background factors when determining a sentence for Indigenous offenders in order to address their “serious overrepresentation” in prison.
Indigenous people often feel removed from the justice system, said Mitch Walker, vice-president of the Gladue Writers Society of British Columbia, which promotes the best practices for writing Gladue reports that lay out the Indigenous background of an accused in pre-sentencing.
“For First Nations people, justice just kind of happens to them. It doesn’t happen with them, it doesn’t happen for them, it doesn’t happen for their benefit,” he said. “And their interactions with the justice system have historically and contemporaneously been so negative that there’s a lot of fear.”