Black Youth and the Criminal Justice System: Summary Report of an Engagement Process in Canada

• Previous Page
• Table of Contents
• Next Page

Priority Areas for Action and Promising Programs, Services, and Approaches

This section outlines the priority areas for action and promising programs, services and approaches that were identified through the engagement process.

Addressing low-income concentration, survival-motivated crime, and community prevention

Findings from this engagement process demonstrated how the interconnectedness of poverty and anti-Black racism shapes the lives of Black youth and significantly impacts the likelihood that they end up in the CJS. Preventative action should be taken to address poverty directly and mitigate the impact of poverty on Black youth’s likelihood of offending. This action should pay particular attention to the needs of newcomers and Black youth facing mental health difficulties. The following are proposed ways to achieve this:

• Increase funding to financially assist economically marginalized Black families with living costs.
• Increase funding for childcare, including in-home respite care, among Black families and single parents.
• Identify long-term employment opportunities for Black parents and Black youth living in poverty, provide training for skills that are tailored to gaps in the labour market. A clear pathway from training to job opportunities should be established. This should be available to Canadian-born and newcomer Black parents. These should be run by Black-led community organizations or in partnership with organizations of this nature.
• Provide post-secondary education funding for Black youth.
• Cease the development of social housing projects that create low-income concentration by design. Government-assisted housing should be dispersed across neighbourhoods that vary by economic class.
• Provide stable funding for community organizations that are Black-led and culturally-appropriate that assist with important services such as: behavioural management, mental health, drug prevention/addiction services, after-school recreational programs, community-oriented mentorship, early crime intervention programs, homelessness, hunger, financial insecurity, gun/gang exit and interruption, newcomer and refugee settlement/language services, family counselling and support, and education about Black heritage. These programs should be evaluated for effectiveness.

Addressing the needs of newcomers

There is considerable overlap in the experiences of newcomer and Canadian-born Black youth, and most of the recommendations in this report seek to address these shared needs. However, the engagement sessions highlighted that migration and settlement is particularly challenging for Black families and youth. This is especially true for those who have fled violence or otherwise politically unstable regions, and who may still be dealing with various forms of trauma. The following are proposed ways to address the needs specific to newcomers:

• Increase funding and support for a diversification of settlement services and staff training to deliver holistic and long-term programming for both families and youth based on critical need and not time since arrival in Canada. Specifically:
  • During the delivery of settlement services, mandate and include provisions for social support beyond education, housing, and health care that focus on crime prevention and improving coordination and implementation of early interventions targeting youth involved in the CJS.
  • This diversification in settlement services should stem from an alignment of goals and coordination across municipal, provincial, and federal governments.
  • This includes increasing the upper age limit of youth’s admissibility to these services from 18 to 24 years old, where applicable.
• Improve and offer housing options with culturally-appropriate wrap-around supports for newly arrived and established newcomer and refugee families in the absence of safe and affordable social housing. An exemplary model is the IRCOM Model (see: Bucklaschuk, 2016).
• Increase funding and support for children and youth who have experienced interrupted schooling and require extra academic support, tutoring, and translation services:
  • Ensure credits are transferable to meet post-secondary education requirements and increase flexible options for transitional schooling through vocational programs.
  • Ensure availability of additional education supports including extra-curricular activities, guidance and counselling services, and investment in social clubs.
• Increase funding and support for ongoing relationship building between the Departments of Justice Canada, Public Safety Canada, and Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada and other newcomer- and refugee-serving organizations.
• Increase funding and supports for programming designed to educate newcomers on the Canadian criminal justice system.
• Improve population-level and individual-level data collection and analysis to identify policy gaps and unmet service/programming needs among Black newcomer and refugee youth.
  • Data collection and research should be led by or conducted in partnership with relevant community leadership, and should focus on criminal justice-related data and extend to other systems including education, settlement services, housing, employment, child welfare, and mental health care.
  • Ensure that newcomer youth receive education and social services that are age-appropriate.

Addressing education, schooling, and the school-to-prison pipeline

Findings from this engagement process revealed that negative schooling experiences and outcomes are related to a higher likelihood of Black youth becoming involved with the CJS. These outcomes and experiences are grounded in anti-Black racism. Action should be taken to separate schools and the CJS. The following are proposed ways to achieve this:

• Assess explicit racial bias of students upon entry to teachers college, and of educators prior to hiring. Set a zero-tolerance limit that must not be transgressed.
• Increase and incentivize representation of Black educators from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds. This must occur at the primary and secondary school level.
• Require anti-Black racism and culturally-sensitive training for existing and new educators. This training should be evaluated for effectiveness and should be about:
  • The struggles, histories, experiences, and perspectives of Black youth;
  • Reflective and self-reflective practices that examine the role of colonization and White supremacy in shaping the conscious and unconscious biases and beliefs that may be held; 
  • Effective strategies for interacting with Black youth;
  • What constitutes microaggressions, explicit racist remarks or practices, and exclusion; and,
  • Evidence of how racist teaching practices have negatively impacted Black youth and led to ineffective teaching.
• Revise curricula to integrate aspects of Black history, culture, and accomplishments across subjects.
• Eradicate zero-tolerance policies, which have been demonstrated to have a disproportionate negative impact on Black students.
  • A move to violence prevention, social skills-building, positive behavioural supports, and other forms of progressive discipline should be undertaken.
• Redirect funding from police presence in school settings toward the provision of adequate mental health and conflict resolution professionals. Their approaches should be culturally-relevant to Black youth, and these professionals should be racially diverse.
  • These professionals should be tasked with addressing behavioural and academic issues that are focused on identifying solutions rather than punishments.
  • They should be consulted and make evidenced-based decisions regarding referrals to Individualized Program Plans (IPPs), alternative schooling, and decisions regarding suspension and expulsion.
  • They should consider factors like poverty, family conflict or dysfunction, trauma, and unresolved grief when making decisions.
  • Supports should be increased for culturally-sensitive social workers and child and youth workers with a mandate to find remedies to keep youth with their families; removal from the home should be a last resort.
  • Grief and trauma counsellors should be brought to schools in communities impacted by gun violence.
  • The presence and availability of social workers and other professionals who can connect with community organizations should be increased in schools, along with offering a tailored approach to Black children and youth facing challenges. Ensure they have a manageable caseload.
• Collect and report racially disaggregated data annually on suspensions, expulsions, and drop-out rates at the primary and secondary school level. These data should be publicly available and the necessity for anti-racism informed corrective measures should be assessed and implemented on an annual basis.
• Collect and report racially disaggregated data annually on IPPs and other alternative education programming. This should include enrollment rates, length of enrollment, transfers back to traditional schooling, drop-out rates on the IPP/after returning to traditional schooling, and graduation rates on the IPP/other alternative education programming and after returning to traditional schooling. These data should be publicly available and the necessity for anti-racism informed corrective measures should be assessed and implemented on an annual basis.
• Implement an advocacy initiative to provide assistance and support for Black youth and their families by:
  • Consulting families on decision-making regarding academic streaming (differentiating students based on perceived academic ability/previous achievements (Segedin, 2012)), alternative education, and IPPs.
    • Requiring parental consent for IPP/other alternative education programming enrollment.
  • Increasing awareness of students’ rights and obligations.
  • Providing support to address racism and discrimination in schools and address the school-to-prison pipeline.
• Adhere to protocols of annual reassessment regarding IPP/other alternative education programming enrollment.
• Assess effectiveness of IPPs/other alternative education programming and overhaul initiatives that have poor program outcomes, like low levels of return to traditional school settings and low student engagement.
• Collect data annually on the racial make-up of academic streaming. These data should be publicly available and the necessity for adjustments to correct racial biases contributing to differential outcomes should be assessed and implemented on an annual basis.
• Establish an independent complaint-management body that youth and parents can access that ensures remedies and accountability for anti-Black racism in schools. Staff terminated by the school board or this independent body should be prohibited from being hired at other schools.
• Create strategies that encourage and support Black students to consider and prepare for promising career paths of interest to them. The pathways to job prospects, employers, necessary credentials and experience should be clear. These strategies should be linked to the long-term employment opportunities outlined in the recommendations above for addressing low-income concentration for youth about to graduate.

Addressing over-policing, under-policing, and community safety

Findings from this engagement process illustrate that existing approaches to policing often create more harm than good for Black youth. The following are proposed ways to address this:

• Assess the explicit racial biases of students upon entry and recruitment to police academies, during training, and before hiring police officers. Set a zero-tolerance limit that must not be transgressed.
• Increase and incentivize representation of racialized police officers and other members of police services, especially representation of Black officers and members from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds.
• Require anti-Black racism and culturally-sensitive training for existing and new members of the police services. This training should be evaluated for effectiveness and should cover:
  • The struggles, histories, experiences, and perspectives of Black youth;
  • Reflective and self-reflective practices that examine the role of colonization and White supremacy in shaping the conscious and unconscious biases and beliefs that may be held; 
  • Effective strategies for interacting with Black youth;
  • What constitutes microaggressions, explicit racist remarks or practices, or exclusionary and alienating practices; and,
  • Evidence of how racist policing practices negatively impact Black youth and lead to ineffective policing.
• Eliminate unjust and biased stop and search, carding, and street checks practices across Canada.
• Increase funding and develop strategies for relationship building, reciprocal dialogue, and building bridges of empathy and understanding between police and community members, including Black youth. These strategies should:
  • Take place in the community;
  • Be facilitated by Black community leaders; and,
  • Be collaborative with community organizations, residents, and police.
• Address the current approach to dealing with mental health issues:
  • Require mental health workers to accompany police officers for requests for assistance pertaining to people in mental health crises who possess weapons. In instances where there are no weapons reported, mental health workers should respond without police presence.
  • Abolish the practice of police officers conducting wellness checks and redirect funds for mental health workers to do this work.
  • Train police officers on how to interact with people undergoing acute mental health crises and on de-escalation techniques.
• Increase police accountability for brutality, excessive use of force, harassment, and under-policing against Black youth and their families by:
  • Penalizing police misconduct through legal action.
  • Creating legislation that outlines the parameters of “excessive force” and harassment and clearly outlines when physical force may be used. The effectiveness of this legislation should be tracked.
  • Mandating de-escalation training.
  • Standardizing the use of body cameras and legislation that penalizes officers who turn off cameras during interactions.
  • Developing independent oversight bodies for police across each province and territory and expanding the issues they oversee to include: police misconduct, failures to offer assistance to Black youth requesting help, harassment, excessive use of force, police brutality, interactions resulting in death, and other complaints. These bodies should be composed of an ethnoculturally diverse group of community leaders, government officials, and those in the legal profession who have a clear record of commitment to anti-racism and ensuring effective policing.
  • Collect and report racially disaggregated data annually on complaints brought to independent oversight bodies, as well as the ethnocultural make-up of cases dismissed and remedies. These data should be publicly available and released annually, and the necessity for anti-racism informed corrective measures should be assessed annually.
• Establish a nation-wide database that tracks complaints and penalties for police misconduct. Prohibit the hiring of officers who have been fired for this reason in other police forces or cities.
• Collect and report racially disaggregated data annually on the racial make-up of youth who are subject to stop and search practices, brought into police stations by police for any reason, charged for any offence (organized by offence categories), receive extrajudicial measures, or are placed under bail conditions by police. These data should be publicly available and the necessity for anti-racism informed corrective measures should be assessed on an annual basis.

Addressing differential outcomes in the courts, ineffective legal representation, and legislation

Findings from this engagement process provide evidence that court proceedings and issues regarding legal representation lead to unfair legal outcomes for Black youth and their overrepresentation in the CJS. The following are proposed ways to address these issues:

• Considering the vastly different approaches used by the youth and adult CJS, and the fact that the adult CJS has more pervasive impacts on Black young adults (and young adults in general), expand the application of the Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA) to youth aged 12-24.
  • Considerable research from the field of neuroscience demonstrates that the brain does not fully mature until around age 25, with some research citing that this does not happen until age 30. This is particularly true of the parts of the brain tasked with “executive functioning” which is important for assessing risk, impulse control, and decision-making (Dahl, 2001; Giedd et al., 1999; Jernigan et al., 1999; Rubia et al., 2000). In light of the clear implications this has on offending, young adults aged 18 to 24 years should go through the same system as youth 12 to 17 years.
• Mandate that judges use reasonable discretion that considers age during sentencing when the defendant is a Black youth below the age of 25.
  • Black children and youth are more likely to have their age overestimated, be perceived as adults, deemed less innocent,  treated more severely than White and Hispanic counterparts (Goff et al., 2014),  perceived as less emotionally expressive than White counterparts (Halberstadt, 2020), and misperceived as being angry (Cooke & Halberstadt, 2021), a phenomenon known as “adultification bias” (Epstein et al., 2017) that negatively impacts Black youth. These misperceptions occur across the education and justice fields (Epstein et al., 2017; Goff et al., 2014), necessitating particular attention being paid to the age of Black young people in court.
• Collect data annually on the racial make-up of sentencing outcomes in the youth and adult systems across Canada. This data should account for criminal history, it should be publicly available, and released annually, and the necessity for anti-racism informed corrective measures should be assessed annually.
• Greatly increase the availability of culturally-appropriate diversion and restorative justice programs for Black youth with the aim of reducing formal processing through the CJS.
  • Increase funding to develop and implement diversion and restorative justice programs relevant to Canadian-born Black youth and newcomers. These programs should be assessed for effectiveness.
• Legally mandate the nation-wide adoption of sentencing principles that consider national, regional, and individual backgrounds and histories of Black youth, and adopt an explicit position on including race-based arguments in courts and countering anti-black racism through Impact of Race and Culture Assessments (IRCA)^Footnote4. To clarify, mandating IRCA means:
  • Preventing discretion by the judiciary, Crown prosecutors, and lawyers to decide whether race-based issues are heard in court.
  • Providing government funding for IRCAs.
  • Requiring judges to explain how details emerging from the IRCA impacted decision-making regarding sentencing as it pertains to moral blameworthiness (i.e., a concept used in the YCJA).
  • Providing governmental funding to train more people on writing IRCAs. This training should be developed in consultation with the professionals involved in developing IRCAs in the past.
• IRCAs should also be employed during other interventions across the CJS including: policing, bail, trial, parole, and release conditions. For example, amendments were made to the Criminal Code in former Bill C-75 that require that the circumstances of Indigenous and “vulnerable” people who are accused be considered at bail. This clause should be amended further to specify that the backgrounds of Black people are also considered at bail, rather than leaving this to the discretion of the courts.
• Improve coordination between and among federal, provincial, and municipal government agencies to administer and evaluate the YCJAwhile ensuring mechanisms for government accountability and oversight, long-term operational funding, ethnocultural community participation in decision-making, and measurement of meaningful outcomes informed by affected communities.
• Judges should adhere to the principle of restraint and assign bail conditions that are not overly complex, contradictory, redundant, or unnecessary, in line with former Bill C-75.
• Require profession-specific training for courtroom actors, including judges, lawyers, prosecutors, and juries on anti-Black racism and anti-racist approaches. This training should be evaluated for effectiveness, and should be about:
  • The struggles, histories, experiences, and perspectives of Black youth;
  • Reflective and self-reflective practices that examine the role of colonization and White supremacy in shaping the conscious and unconscious biases and beliefs that may be held; 
  • Effective strategies for interacting with Black youth;
  • What constitutes microaggressions, explicit racist remarks, and racist or exclusionary practices;
  • Evidence of how racist judiciary, legal, jury, and courtroom practices negatively impact Black youth and lead to discriminatory outcomes and the overrepresentation of Black youth in custody; and,
  • Community diversion options available that are culturally-sensitive.
• Enhance the effectiveness of legal aid by:
  • Increasing funding for legal aid to reduce caseload, increase capacity of legal-aid funded lawyers, increasing ability to engage in test-case work, increasing funding for legal clinics.
  • De-incentivizing the practice where legal aid lawyers encourage Black youth who are innocent or charged for a first offence to plead guilty. The YCJA has provisions to prevent false guilty pleas; these should be adhered to.
  • Increasing and incentivizing Black lawyers to join legal aid in order to give Black youth the option of receiving Black legal representation.
• Increase the representation of racialized judges, Crown prosecutors, and lawyers, especially representation of Black people from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds.
• Increase ethnocultural diversity of juries by providing supports and incentives for the involvement of Black jurors and reviewing the process for jury selection.
• Increase funding for services that act as a liaison between the court system and Black youth and their families that:
  • Provide general and emotional support while navigating the justice system that is responsive to the needs of youth, explain legal terms and court processes in a digestible way, provide tips on reading disclosures, communicate what rights Black youth and their families have, and provide language translation services;
  • Advocate for clients who have issues with legal aid, lawyers, and judges that stem from anti-Black racism;
  • Aid with referrals to culturally-sensitive diversions, counselling, and other supports; and,
  • Provide comprehensive risk/needs assessment to Black youth.

Addressing anti-Black racism in custody and detention

Black youth, their families, and stakeholders highlighted the numerous ways that custodial institutions, staffed primarily by White people, are sites of extreme anti-Black racism where the absence of culturally-relevant services fails to rehabilitate Black youth, often leaving them worse off than when they entered the facilities. The following are proposed ways to address these issues:

• Increase and incentivize representation of racialized custodial staff (including officers, case managers, education professionals, and health and mental health professionals), especially representation of Black custodial staff from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds.
• Assess the explicit racial bias levels of individuals applying to receive training in youth detention and custody centers and at hiring. Set a zero-tolerance limit that must not be transgressed.
• Fund and require anti-Black racism and culturally-sensitive training for existing and new staff members working in custody facilities. This training should be evaluated for effectiveness and should be about:
  • The struggles, histories, experiences, and perspectives of Black youth;
  • Reflective and self-reflective practices that examine the role of colonization and White supremacy in shaping the conscious and unconscious biases and beliefs that may be held;
  • Effective strategies for interacting with Black youth;
  • What constitutes microaggressions, explicit racist remarks or practices, or exclusionary and alienating practices; and,
  • Evidence of how racist practices within custody negatively impact Black youth and lead to contradictory outcomes regarding rehabilitation.
• Collect data annually on the racial make-up of the youth and adults in custody across Canada. This data should be publicly available, and released annually, and the necessity for anti-racism informed corrective measures should be assessed annually.
• Mandating that correctional officers only work with youth or adult populations, not both.
• Increase accountability of staff in youth detention and custody facilities where Black youth are held that address unnecessarily punitive practices such as dehumanizing, neglecting, brutalizing, or harassing youth by:
  • Creating legislation that outlines the parameters of acceptable practices, and prohibits and/or legally penalizes behaviour that transgresses parameters. The effectiveness of this legislation should be assessed;
  • Mandating and funding de-escalation training;
  • Funding and developing provincial independent oversight bodies of youth detention and custody facilities that handle misconduct within institutions and that can penalize staff members through firings and legal action. Complaints may be brought forth by those currently in custody, previously in custody, their families, case managers, legal representation, or other staff within these facilities. These oversight bodies should be ethnoculturally diverse and must not be composed of people who are retired judges, police officers, or have worked in custody. If employees of the oversight body have worked in these fields, they must have a record that demonstrates a longstanding commitment to anti-racism. Data should be collected annually and be publicly available. It should highlight racial differences in complaints, remedies, and case dismissals. The oversight body should be evaluated for effectiveness;
  • Collecting data annually on the racial make-up of youth who are assigned Security Threat Group labels. These data should be publicly available, and released annually, and the necessity for anti-racism informed corrective measures should be assessed annually;
  • Providing transparency to youth and their families about information in a youth’s file leading to the application of an STG label. The decisions on STG labels must be evidence-based; and,
  • Funding research to consider the purpose and effectiveness of STG labels and programming to assist with removing inappropriate STG labels.
• Establish a national database that tracks complaints and penalties for staff in custodial settings. Prohibit hiring officers that have been fired for misconduct in other institutions within or outside of the province.
• Fund and develop programming within youth detention and custody facilities that:
  • Is culturally-relevant to Black youth and trauma-informed;
  • Is oriented towards: rehabilitation and self-development, providing cognitive-behavioural approaches to deal with mental health and addiction issues and the development of coping strategies, assisting with the transition into adult facilities, acquiring academic diplomas, providing skills that are transferrable to needs in the labour market (especially those connected directly to employment opportunities upon release), providing assistance with exiting gang and gun involvement; and,
  • Is developed and implemented in partnership with Black-led community organizations.
• Improve coordination and communication between provincial youth detention and custody facilities as well as adult facilities regarding youth mental health needs, past trauma, learning disabilities, family background, etc., and provide intentional and purposeful interventions to prevent reoffending.

Addressing failures in release, community reintegration, and recidivism

Across Canada, Black youth in the community on probation, parole, or release are set up to fail because of contradictory probation/release conditions and the absence of supports and services that address their needs. Moreover, many Black youth report experiencing anti-Black racism from service providers who are supposed to assist them. Consequently, many Black youth end up reoffending and going back into custody. The following are proposed ways to address these issues:

• Assess the explicit racial biases of people seeking work as parole and probation officers. Set a zero-tolerance limit that must not be transgressed.
• Increase and incentivize representation of racialized parole and probation officers, especially representation of Black officers from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds. Give youth an option to have a parole or probation officer who is Black or has shared lived experience.
• Require anti-Black racism and culturally-sensitive training for existing and new parole and probation officers. This training should be evaluated for effectiveness and should be about:
  • The struggles, histories, experiences, and perspectives of Black youth;
  • Reflective and self-reflective practices that examine the role of colonization and White supremacy in shaping the conscious and unconscious biases and beliefs that may be held; 
  • Effective strategies for interacting with and supporting Black youth;
  • What constitutes microaggressions, explicit racist remarks or practices, exclusionary and alienating practices; and,
  • Evidence of how racist practices at this stage negatively impact Black youth and leads to reoffending.
• Mandate that parole boards exercise the principle of restraint when placing conditions, avoid contradictory conditions, and sparingly use conditions that are grounded in social welfare, rather than criminal justice needs, such as curfews.
• Probation and parole officers should exercise reasonable discretion when made aware of breaches that are not based in criminal behaviour, and advocate for their clients when conditions are deemed unreasonable or particularly difficult for the youth.
• Provide financial resources for youth to meet obligatory probation/release conditions (e.g., transportation to attend counseling).
• Mandate a release plan for Black youth being released from institutions that identifies supports in the community, a place of residence, employment, educational, and volunteer opportunities, services for youth with addictions or mental health issues, mentorship, and ID collection.
• Mitigate the risks of post-release homelessness by:
  • Increasing funding to build more halfway houses for Black youth; and,
  • Providing family counselling that would allow youth to return to the family home, where appropriate.
• Increase funding to establish a collaborative employment network for Canadian-born and newcomer Black youth with a criminal records. The network should:
  • Involve skills development, training opportunities, and a direct pathway to employment in the labour market;
  • Financially support community organizations that can facilitate relationships between Black youth with records and employers. These should be evaluated for effectiveness, as evidenced in hiring rates;
  • Be promoted to Black youth, their families, parole and probation officers, and other people whose job it is to assist Black youth with criminal records; and,
  • Be tailored to assist Black youth.
• Fund Black-led community organizations that incorporate programming components that focus on providing assistance with exiting gangs and removing Security Threat Group labels.
• Collect data annually on the racial make-up of reintegration outcomes for youth. These data should be publicly available, and released annually, and the necessity for anti-racism informed corrective measures should be assessed annually.
• Fund and develop oversight bodies within provinces and territories that address misconduct or anti-Black racism by parole and probation officers. These bodies should be racially diverse and composed of people with a longstanding commitment to anti-racism. They must have the power to penalize officers through termination and legal action. Data should be collected annually and be publicly available. It should identify racial differences in complaints, remedies, and case dismissals. The oversight body should be evaluated for effectiveness. In cases where an oversight body establishes that misconduct has occurred and a youth reoffends, this misconduct should be considered by the court when making decisions regarding bail, sentencing, or other conditions pertaining to the reoffending youth.
• Increase awareness and recourse to existing resources (e.g., make publicly and widely available a list of currently available and culturally-relevant programs and resources).

• Previous Page
• Table of Contents
• Next Page