Smart Justice Network

A hope for the season:

Professor Benjamin Perrin: Law professor at Peter Allard School of Law at UBC and author of Indictment: The Criminal Justice System on Trial

“I am encouraged and excited that there already exist proven ways to address conflict and harm, substance use and mental health issues, poverty, homelessness , and systemic racism, colonialism without the same old cruel, costly and ineffective and often deadly trifecta of policing, punishment and prisons.” (P. 319-320)  Perrin, once an advisor to Harper in the public safety decisions around tough-on-crime, summarizes the many failures of the present approach, and offers a mixture of transformative and restorative justice – healing justice –  based on enhanced community resources in response. The book is a thorough denunciation of the tough-on-crime approach, a focus sure to come back more forcefully in coming elections.  Given the exhaustive condemnation of “policing, punishment and prisons” perhaps we could stop calling what is “a criminal justice system” and start calling it “a criminal legal process.”  CF Perrin, Benjamin. Indictment: The criminal Justice System on Trial University of Toronto Press, 2023. Toronto.  (Book proceeds to go to Str8 UP and Collaborative Justice Project.)

Toronto Star Editorial Board (Dec. 21, 2023)

Learning the lessons of a tragic jail death – We have known that prison makes mental health crises worse. And sometimes,  as we saw in the case of Soleiman Faqiri, much worse. 

“As a society, we have known for decades that we have been housing people in acute mental health crises in our prisons.”  So said Soleiman Faqiri’s lawyer.  To which the Editorial board has added:  “We have also known that prison makes such crises worse. And sometimes, as in Faqiri’s case, much worse… Although the province has not yet responded to the jury’s recommendations, it’s imperative that it accept them in full. Because we know who killed Soleiman Faqiri. And because we now know how to avoid killing anyone else.”  https://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorials/learning-the-lessons-of-a-tragic-jail-death/article_1bb19c1e-9e7b-11ee-8dbe-4b04281b9db6.html?source=newsletter&utm_content=a06&utm_source=ts_nl&utm_medium=email&utm_email=404CAADEF7EB839FC77B1B04F0C251E1&utm_campaign=top_205869

Canadian Lawyer – Michael Spratt

Human rights violations in prison should not be shrouded in secrecy – We must give our justice system more tools to address misconduct by prison officials…

Spratt, a criminal defence lawyer in Ottawa, is firm on his opinion: there are problems but there is also a lack of capacity to correct:  “Let’s not sugarcoat it – there is a palpable injustice within the walls of Canada’s prisons. If you’ve waded into the correctional investigator’s annual reports, you’re well-acquainted with the litany of grievances: punitive use of solitary confinement, inadequate access to healthcare and mental health support, incidents of discrimination and racism, and the haunting prevalence of sexual violence… It’s a bizarre reality that there is no mechanism allowing individuals to return to the sentencing judge to address abuses occurring while serving the sentence.”  https://www.canadianlawyermag.com/news/opinion/human-rights-violations-in-prison-should-not-be-shrouded-in-secrecy/382317

Tweet from Jeffrey Bradley on Shoplifting, diversion, police costs: “The OPS thinks arresting people, who they label “persistent offenders” is a good strategy to “divert” some cases they deem appropriate to a @EFryOttawa program. OPS is the Scrooge!” https://x.com/Jeffrey_Brad/status/1736870275298500636?s=20

Tweet from Mitigation Specialist (US) on clemency:  “Every state has forgotten the tradition of clemency. Countless incarcerated are deserving so let’s get people home & give hope to those inside this season that we believe people are worthy of a first chance in life. The Forgotten Tradition of Clemency.”  https://x.com/Mitigation_Hope/status/1736643499364397537?s=20

The Marshall Project – Rene Ebersole

Old-School Hair Analysis Is Junk Science. But It Still Keeps People Behind Bars – The technique, developed before DNA testing, can’t definitively tie suspects to crime scenes. Try explaining that to juries — or some judges.

This is one of those reports to make you wonder how much of our forensic evidence is junk science and how much media, especially police procedurals, contribute to the persistence of such evidence both in new cases and the author Ebersole points out, in older cases as well.  “In courtrooms across America, “scientific evidence” used to imprison people for heinous crimes has been increasingly discredited. Blood-spatter patterns, arson analysis, bite-mark comparisons, even some fingerprint evidence have all turned out to be unreliable… A quarter of the 3,439 exonerations tracked by the National Registry of Exonerations involved false or misleading forensic evidence… But these exonerations are only the tip of the iceberg, some experts say.”  https://www.themarshallproject.org/2023/12/15/florida-death-penalty-hair-analysis-junk-science?utm_source=email&utm_medium=subscriber-email&utm_source=TMP-Newsletter&utm_campaign=e5f8ab5a02-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2023_12_18_10_11&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-e5f8ab5a02-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D

Everett (WA) Hearld.net – Jim Bloss

Everett sentencing ordinance not focused on problem…

The Everett City Council wants to have a minimum sentence of 30 days for repeated petty crime  offenders.   Bloss pens a letter to the editor saying that the solution is looking at the wrong part of the problem. He supports an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) effort to promote alternate / diversion sentencing for petty crimes, rather than a month in jail – just enough to mess up any of the stable elements in an offender’s life while ignoring the real problems,  and more likely to perpetuate the real problem.  Here’s the wisdom:  “The people who commit these crimes are more often than not only victims of their behavioral illness or addiction and wouldn’t have committed these transgressions but for issues over which they have little or no control. These people should be being diverted into treatment and programs to help them toward recovery, which is what I thought the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD) program was supposed to be doing; pre-booking diversion into services rather than “tiger-trapping” them into the justice system. Isn’t this program working? If not, why not?”  https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/everett-sentencing-ordinance-not-focused-on-problem/