Week 5: Anti-Black and

Anti-Indigenous racism
in the Criminal Justice
System
CRM 101
Agenda
B y th e en d of cl a ss tod a y , we wi l l d i scu ss:

• How crime and criminalization are structured by race

and its intersections.
• The importance of a critical and intersectional
approach.
• The landscape of anti-Blackness, settler colonialism
and the criminal justice system.
• Racial profiling practices.
• Case studies.
 The Social Relations of Race
and Crime
• From a critical criminology perspective, we must take into account
systems of power when thinking about crime and criminalization.
• Crime and criminal justice are shaped and structured by race,
class, gender, and other intersections.
• Racialization is the process through which ideas about race are
constructed.
• The criminal justice system can work to maintain oppressive social
structures.
• These systems impact and influence how racialized people come
into contact with the criminal justice system.
 Intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989)

“Intersectional oppression arises out of

the combination of various oppressions
which, together, produce something
unique and distinct from any one form of
discrimination alone.”
(OHRC, 2001, p. 3)
 Intersectionality Cont’d

• Highlights how multiple identities

intersect and compound to shape an
individuals’ experience of the criminal
justice system.
• Helps to understand the ways in which
criminalization is not just about
individual actions but also about
broader systemic inequality.
• Advances the idea that in order to
understand social phenomena, we must
pay attention to socio-historical
context.
 “It is racially disproportionate policing, rather than racially disproportionate crime, that has
resulted in the enormous levels of Black people behind bars in Canada today” (p. 88)

• Contemporary anti-Black police violence must be

understood as part of an ongoing legacy of anti-
Black racism in Canada.
• Via anti-Blackness, Blackness is associated with

Maynard (2017)
criminality in Canadian society.
• Racial profiling leads to Black, Indigenous and
racialized communities being targeted and
surveilled.
• The ‘War on Drugs’ has been instrumental in the
overpolicing, overincarceration and oversurveilling
of racialized communities in Canada.
• Racial discrepancies exist in every layer of the
criminal justice system.
 “Any action undertaken for reasons
of safety, security or public
protection that relies on
stereotypes about race, colour,
ethnicity, ancestry, religion or place
of origin rather than on reasonable

Racial Profiling suspicion, to single out an individual

for greater scrutiny or different
treatment.” (OHRC, n.d)

• Carding: the police practice of

stopping, questioning and
documenting individuals when no
particular offence is being
investigated.
The Issue of • There is limited systemic
race-based data collected
Data by the institutions that
comprise the criminal justice
system.
• 20 years of research have consistently found
that Canadian police stop, search and question
Black, Indigenous and South Asian people at
higher rates than other groups.
• Black and Indigenous people are grossly
overrepresented across Canada’s criminal

The Current
justice system (Wortley, n.d).
• The overall charge rate for Black women is 2.4x

Moment Cont’d
higher than the rate for white women (Wortley
& Jung, 2020).
• Despite making up only 8.8% of the population
of Toronto, Black people represented 12% of all
civilians involved in SIU investigations including
use of force cases (28.8%), fatal shootings (70%)
and deadly encounters (61.5%) (OHRC, 2018).
• Indigenous peoples make up only 4% of the
population, but represent 18.5% of offenders
under federal supervision.
 R. v. Gladue
• Judges must consider the impact of historical injustices in the
biographical circumstances of individual Indigenous people who
find themselves in the criminal justice system.

• Judges must consider all available sanctions other than

imprisonment for all offenders.

• Goal is to address mass incarceration of Indigenous peoples.

• Use of pre-sentencing reports to assess factors = ’Gladue Reports’

• Critiques : Ineffectively and inconsistently applied; Non-Indigenous

offenders have benefitted more from sentencing reforms;
Overincarceration has worsened since Gladue (Iacobucci, 2013)
 Restorative Justice
Restorative justice: A direct and indirect mediation model that
emphasizes restitution and community participation, aimed at
rehabilitating offenders and reintegrating them back into their
communities.

Principles underlying restorative justice:

• Emphasizes social rather than moral responsibility.
• Focus is on those closely affected by the crime.
• Crime is seen as an injury to a person and a community that must be
repaired.
• Origins in Indigenous knowledges.
Overrepresentation of Indigenous
Women in Federal Custody
Settler Colonial Violence in Policing:
Saskatoon Freezing Deaths
• Also known as ‘starlight tours’ – police practice of dropping
Indigenous men in isolated areas outside of the city in the winter
without adequate clothing.
• Came to light after the case of Darryl Night who survived and
spoke out.
• Then, the deaths of Neil Stonechild, Rodney Naistus and
Lawrence Wegner were deemed suspicious.
• Wright Inquiry launched in 2003.
Thank you!
S ee y ou n ext week !