“Dope sick” refers to the violent physical reaction that occurs when an addict goes a day without drugs. The second term is the narcotic she would steal for.
Buckshot, who became addicted at 25 after having surgery and taking a prescribed narcotic for the pain, would steal steaks from an Ottawa grocery store by hiding them under large packages of toilet paper. Then she’d sell them for half-price.
The thefts kicked off a cycle of incarceration, a revolving door that spun her in and out of jail every two weeks one summer.
“I got caught up in the system,” says Buckshot, 30. The former Miss Algonquin Nation, who came ninth out of 32 contestants in the 2002 Miss Indian World competition, was last released from an Ottawa jail in September.
Her story is common among aboriginal women and men. While admissions of white adults to Ontario jails fell 20 per cent between 1992 and 2009, the number of aboriginal inmates continued to go up, even as crime rates went down.
Aboriginal people accounted for less than 2 per cent of Ontario’s adult population in 2009, but more than 10 per cent of adults admitted to provincial jails. In federal penitentiaries, they are nearly 20 per cent of inmates.
Proportions are even more skewed when it comes to young offenders. Aboriginal girls account for one of every three jail admissions to a provincial facility for female youth, according to data obtained by University of Toronto doctoral candidate Akwasi Owusu-Bempah through a freedom-of-information request. That is 10 times higher than their proportion of the province’s youth population.
Among male youth in jail, aboriginal boys make up 15 per cent. In the general Ontario population, they account for only 3 per cent of boys, which means they are overrepresented in jail by a factor of five.
In a report released Tuesday , former Supreme Court justice Frank Iacobucci harshly criticized the judicial system for “systemic racism” and labeled the marginalization and jailing of aboriginals a “serious crisis.”
There’s no qualitative difference in the crimes aboriginals and non-aboriginals are put in jail for, among the most common being assault, break-and-enter, and theft and possession, according to a soon to be published report co-written by lawyer Jonathan Rudin. But aboriginal youth are treated more harshly.
In 2009-10, of young offenders convicted for assault, about 25 per cent of aboriginal youth were sent to jail, compared with less than 15 per cent of non-aboriginal youth. Similar discrepancies exist for theft and possession, and break-and-enter crimes.
For young offenders and adults alike, the reason they’re in jail often isn’t the original sentence, but rather their inability to comply with conditions placed on their release.
Buckshot landed in jail, time and again, for not following bail conditions that stipulated she couldn’t possess drug paraphernalia or go downtown.
“They would make the rules, but they knew I was an addict,” she says.
Even now, Buckshot still faces trouble with the law due to breaches because of a suicide attempt and a snowstorm that left her with no form of transportation to appear in court.
Jill “was a strong young woman in our community who taught youth hoop dancing, beading and sewing,” her mother wrote in an email to the Star. She asked that her name not be used. “Family and friends have tried to help her, but her addiction is stronger than our love for her. So we wait aside until she is ready.”
Manitoba, where upwards of 50 per cent of inmates are aboriginal, is one of the provinces building new jails.
In 2012, MP Carolyn Bennett toured the Women’s Correctional Centre in Headingley, Man., which has an exercise room, elders’ room and “beautiful chalets” where women in custody can keep their children until they’re of school age.
“Everything seemed like progress, until I asked the superintendent what they’re all here for,” says Bennett, the Liberal critic for Aboriginal Affairs.
“And what she said was, practically none of them were initially sentenced to jail . . . Almost all of them had some sort of community sentence with conditions. And with one slip — say they go home for a funeral and associate with someone they’re not supposed to — they end up incarcerated.”
The situation in northern Ontario is similar. Alvin Fiddler, deputy grand chief of the Nishnawbe Aski Nation, was disturbed by his tour a few years ago of the Kenora district jail, while working with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
The adult facility had about 120 male and 30 to 40 female inmates, almost all aboriginal. Most had cycled in and out, serving an average sentence of two months. The superintendent knew them all by name.
Rudin, dressed in a sweater and jeans, feet encased in moccasins, is sitting in the Yonge St. office where he works as program director of Aboriginal Legal Services of Toronto.
His casual attire belies an impressive resumé that includes Osgoode Hall Law School, an advisory committee at the Ipperwash Inquiry, and arguing aboriginal rights cases at the Supreme Court.
Despite his experience, Rudin says he doesn’t have definitive answers as to why aboriginals are so overrepresented in jail. One reason for harsher sentences may be that aboriginal youth rack up more prior offences. But that type of data isn’t tracked.
What he knows, anecdotally, is that the system treats first offences by aboriginal offenders more harshly. And, since the penalties escalate, they’re likely to be treated even more harshly when they reoffend.
Is it racism?
Not always, at least not overtly, he says. Judges may assume that the arrest of a middle-class kid is embarrassing enough in and of itself, and that belief may play a part in sentencing. Judges may hand out stricter punishments to kids from rougher parts of town because they think those kids won’t experience equivalent shame.
Judges in remote areas of the province may assume there’s no good diversion program available.
Then there are the contributing factors in native communities: poverty, drug abuse, the legacy of residential schools.
Although Ontario’s last residential school closed more than 30 years ago, the impact of abuse and separation continues into the next generations. Students sent away to school as young as 6 were taught discipline instead of loving parenting.
“Residential school parents talk about the fact that they were never able to hug their children. They were never able to tell their children they loved them,” says Rudin. “And that has an impact.”
The legacy of physical and sexual abuse is passed down to third and even fourth generations, who turn to alcohol and drugs to cope, he says. The effects snowball, and they go on to lose their children.
There are now more aboriginal kids in jail and foster care than there ever were in residential schools, says Rudin. Aboriginal children and youth make up 22 per cent of Ontario’s Crown wards.
Most children taken away from their parents are never adopted. Anger issues on the part of the child and a zero tolerance policy in foster care can result in the police being called.
“You start racking up charges in the foster care system,” says Rudin. “And you start moving from home to home to home.”
Ontario has never tracked the relationship between foster care and jail. But a 1995 study of a Saskatchewan penitentiary, part of the Royal Commission Report on Aboriginal Peoples co-written by Rudin, found that 95 per cent of the aboriginal inmates had at some point been adopted or in foster care.
Advocates say there is a correlation between the underfunding and hardship endured by aboriginal families and the fact so many kids are in foster care.
This week, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal launches a landmark case into allegations that the federal government is underfunding child and family services on reserves.
The case is “historic,” says Cindy Blackstock, executive director of the Ottawa-based First Nations Child and Family Caring Society. “It’s the only time that we know of in the developed world where a country has been brought before a legal body that can make enforceable orders regarding its current treatment of First Nations children.”
For Viola Thomas , there’s no question that one pathway to jail is poverty.
Thomas is community relations representative for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission investigation into residential schools. She was also part of a joint project last year with the Native Women’s Association of Canada that canvassed 300 incarcerated women and girls — all survivors of the residential schools or children of survivors.
One of the most common charges was minor theft.
“They become criminalized because of breach of probation and then it escalates and then they go and serve their time. And there’s no adequate supports for them,” says Thomas. “It’s then easy to become “systematically criminalized.”
Many women told stories of sexual violence they endured because their relatives were survivors of residential schools.
Thomas points to the complexity of treatment needed, not only for the addictions resulting from sexual abuse, but for the trauma itself. The treatment isn’t widely available in jail.
“If Canada and the provinces and territories wanted to get rid of some of the bottlenecks in the courts to deal with more serious crimes, then it seems to me that some of these less serious misdemeanours could be handled in a much more efficient way,” she says.
And consider this: two-thirds of imprisoned aboriginal women are single mothers — a fact that the Native Women’s Association says may be condemning “a new generation to the child welfare system.”
This week, the judge who presides over aboriginal youth court in Toronto is trying something new.
Instead of looking down from the bench, Justice Marion Cohen is sitting at a table in the middle of the room. The petite judge is dressed in a black suit, forgoing her judicial robes. Sitting around her are the Crown, defence lawyer, councillors, parents and the accused.
“This is the way we’re going to do it from now on,” says Cohen, looking over her trendy red-rimmed glasses to address the group.
The specialized court, the first of its first kind for young offenders in Canada, opened six months ago. It sits one afternoon every two weeks in one of the youth courts at 311 Jarvis St.
Around the table are Helen Kavouras Lopes, who is the Legal Aid Ontario duty counsel lawyer, the Crown and aboriginal court worker Juliann Wemigwans. All three try to identify kids who qualify for diversion.
When the Crown agrees, charges are stayed and a volunteer council run by Aboriginal Legal Services of Toronto decides how the kid should make amends. Wemigwans also helps connect youth to community and counselling programs.
Diversion is an important tool, because once the charges are stayed it means the youth is no longer in the system — no longer out on bail — and that eliminates the risk of being tossed into jail for violating conditions such as a 6 p.m. curfew, attending school, staying away from friends, or carrying bail papers.
Those conditions may be onerous for a kid already in trouble with the law.
A study of youth in custody in Toronto and B.C. by the Canadian Institute for Health Information found that 31 per cent had conduct disorders, while as many as one in three had ADHD. Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder also affects many aboriginal communities.
Once in the system, youths can “spiral” if they violate court orders, Kavouras Lopes says.
Kavouras Lopes says she asks every single kid she comes into contact with at the Jarvis St. youth courts if they’re aboriginal, so that they can take advantage of the aboriginal court.
On this day, one young offender gets diversion. Another, a 15-year-old held in jail overnight for stealing coughdrops, gets released with the promise of counselling from a court worker with ALST. A third more serious offender, held because he violated his bail curfew, is released to children’s aid workers and referred to CAMH for a psychiatric assessment.
The court is one of several aboriginal courts in the city that were created in the wake of a 1999 Supreme Court decision, R. vs. Gladue , that recognized the huge overrepresentation of aboriginals in Canadian jails. The court directed judges to consider the background and individual circumstances of aboriginal offenders and, where reasonable, to look for alternatives to jail.
Besides the youth court, there are now four part-time adult aboriginal courts in the city, although the principles of Gladue are supposed to be applied in all courtrooms. It’s up to offenders to identify themselves as aboriginal.
Despite innovations like Gladue, the continuing flow of aboriginal offenders into the jail system can be discouraging.
Aboriginal youth account for less than 1 per cent of young offenders in Ontario who get diversion, says Rudin, even though the Youth Criminal Justice Act specifically addresses people in the justice system to look for alternatives to incarceration for them.
Justice Melvyn Green, one of a number of judges who preside in the adult Gladue court at Old City Hall, wrote in a 2012 paper published in Criminal Reports that Gladue reports — in-depth histories compiled by a caseworker and the offender — can reduce sentencing. But the time to write them, and a shortage of caseworkers, means such reports are written only when the Crown is seeking a six-month sentence or more. That applies to less than 1 per cent of cases, wrote Green.
Despite it all, Rudin remains optimistic.
“All of us here, we’re not masochists,” he says about his co-workers at ALST, which runs the Gladue program in Toronto. “We don’t do this because we want to be depressed. And one of the reasons is because we see success.”
Gladue courts now operate in Sarnia and London, and the province has also recently provided $6.25 million in funding to hire 80 new aboriginal mental health and addiction workers. The government is also expanding telepsychiatry and telemedicine for remote communities.
“On a micro level, when you see initiatives like the Gladue court in Toronto, you see that they actually make a difference,” says Rudin. “The issue is: When are they going to actually catch on more broadly, and when are things going to change?
“But the fact that there are examples is very powerful, because otherwise people are going to say there’s nothing we can do.”
Source: thestar.com
Author: Patty Winsa and Jim Rankin
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