May 7, 2023 – School policing…
Ottawa Carleton District School Board (OCDSB): Response to Ottawa Police Association (OPA)
The presence of police in schools across the country has been controversial from both the perspective of what their presence means for the students / staff, and who and how they are paid. The issue is alive and well in Ottawa where the requirements for individual police officers presenting to students is clear but subject to push back from the Ottawa Police Association. The link offers an immediate response to the appearance at the school of a police officer and parent who was required to appear without uniform and to arrive without a police car. The link also offers the policy of the school board around the school resource officer and such appearances. Negotiations are continuing. https://www.ocdsb.ca/news/ocdsb_response_opa
Related Tweet from Dr. Justin Piché on schools & policing: 1/2 “This (quite conciliatory) statement from the OCDSB in response to the OPA is worth the read. Raise your hand if you’re surprised that the @OTTAWAPAca and their reps like @OPALamothe (see 2/2) decided to play the heavies & escalate the situation…2/ 2/2 … in the media + socials last night & today instead of waiting for their meeting w/ the board to sort this situation out calmly next week. The OPA doesn’t like to hear the word “no”. They can’t even handle accommodations. Quite an image of policing… you do realize that cops investigate, arrest, charge & detain people for a living? That’s exclusion work. Some of those people cops criminalize are parents of school kids. Some kids are criminalized themselves. They may not see police classroom visits as an educative experience.” https://twitter.com/JustinPicheh/status/1654195256961781761?s=20 Related Tweet from Michael Spratt: “This is not a trend, we just don’t want uniformed cops with their guns in school. If the cop parent refuses to go out of uniform, that is on her.”
https://twitter.com/mspratt/status/1654303810972446720?s=20
CBC News – Candace Maracle
Red dress exhibits mark National Day of Awareness for MMIWG2S (May 5)
“Brandy Stanovich says she got overwhelmed when she hung up a little red dress representing a young girl for an exhibit at the Native Women’s Association of Canada’s (NWAC) office in Gatineau, Que.” The Red Dress represents a loss or stolen Indigenous sister. https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/red-dress-day-mmiwg-may-5-1.6832353 Related Tweet from Brandi Morin: “It’s about so much more than a red dress. Dig deep. The violence against our women has been happening since colonization AKA the ravaging, stealing of lands & resources all the while stealing and pillaging our women. We have to confront the violence at its roots and then eradicate the racism, the free for all mind sets towards Indigenous territories and bodies. Then the Justice and healing can begin.” https://twitter.com/Songstress28/status/1654484113263595520?s=20 Tweet from Lisa Richardson, MD: “Today is Red Dress Day\. It is a day when we honour missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls & gender diverse people. We remember & uplift them. We support their loved ones. We recognize this disproportionate violence as a national tragedy. We advocate for change. #MMIWG2S” https://twitter.com/RicharLisa/status/1654469239711883269?s=20
CBC News – Sarah Law
Lac La Croix First Nation in northwestern Ontario reaches ‘transformational’ land claim settlement – $131.3M settlement aims to right wrongs from 1873
The federal and Ontario provincial governments have acknowledged a claim by Lac La Croix First Nations that followed the failure of the governments to meet the obligations of Treat 3 signed in 1873 and whose failures has continued to deny economic benefits. The link also offers the process which led to the agreement on recompense. The Lac La Croix population, 489 in total, will receive $118.2 million from the federal government and the remaining $13.1 million from Ontario. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/laclacroixfirstnation-northwesternontario-landclaim-1.6832432
Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) orders a stay of proceedings in Hanan case
Windsor Star – Doug Schmidt (Mar 22, 2022) – Appeal court split on conviction of Windsor killer Hanan https://windsorstar.com/news/local-news/appeal-court-split-on-conviction-of-windsor-killer-hanan
At the link immediately above one can find the detail on the appeal of the conviction of Dia Eddin Ganan for manslaughter for which he was sentenced to 15 years. Since the Appeal Court split on the decision around unreasonable delay bringing the case to trial, the case was referred to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court recently ruled that the delay in bringing the case to trial originally – Hanan was charged in November, 2018, was outside the limits established by the Jordan decision. “The result is that the net delay of about 35 months is an unreasonable delay contrary to s. 11(b) of the Charter… We would therefore allow the appeal, set aside the convictions, and order a stay of proceedings.” https://decisions.scc-csc.ca/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/19830/index.do Related article: Supreme Court of Canada – Case in Brief R. v. Hanan The Supreme Court sets aside convictions of manslaughter and other firearm offences due to unreasonable trial delays. https://www.scc-csc.ca/case-dossier/cb/2023/40097-eng.aspx#criminallaw
Tweet from Jeffrey Bradley (@Jeffrey_Brad) on Punitive Justice: “The assumption that all victim/survivor advocates are invested in punitiveness is very wrong. Many call for upstream prevention, healing support, restorative justice, and community care. Law reforms made in the name of survivors so often lead to further harm and expand the power of the state to commit violence by punishing and imprisoning more people. The criminal legal system fails everyone under its current form and must be dismantled and resisted. Tinkering a systemically racist, classist, sexist, and colonial system is unlikely to work.
https://twitter.com/Jeffrey_Brad/status/1653754318187642881?s=20
The Intercept (US) – Liliana Segura and Jordan Smith
Shocking Vote by Oklahoma Parole Board Clears the Way for Richard Glossip’s Execution – Over the unprecedented pleas of the attorney general and state lawmakers to spare Glossip’s life, board members voted to deny clemency.
Everyone in Oklahoma, including the attorney general, thinks Glossip’s trial was sufficiently flawed that the execution, repeatedly delayed but not reversed, ought to be halted and a new trial held to expose the contrary evidence of miscarriage. Only the Oklahoma State Court of Criminal Appeal and the Parole Board aren’t giving in. “There was every reason to expect the board would vote to spare Glossip’s life. Among the witnesses who appeared on Glossip’s behalf on Wednesday was Attorney General Gentner Drummond himself, along with prominent Oklahoma lawmakers who have come to believe in Glossip’s innocence… Yet in another stunning reversal of fortune, the board voted to deny clemency. Barring intervention by the courts or Gov. Kevin Stitt, Glossip will be executed by lethal injection on May 18.” https://theintercept.com/2023/04/27/richard-glossip-execution-parole-board/ Related article: New York Times – Adam Liptak Supreme Court Stays Execution of Death Row Inmate Richard Glossip The court acted after Oklahoma’s attorney general joined Mr. Glossip in urging it to halt the execution, which had been scheduled for May 18. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/05/us/supreme-court-richard-glossip-execution.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur Related article: The Guardian (UK) – US supreme court halts execution of Oklahoma inmate Richard Glossip – Divided state panel had voted against recommending clemency for Glossip, 60, condemned to death for murder of motel owner https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/may/05/richard-glossip-us-supreme-court-halts-execution-oklahoma
The Appeal (US) – Wayne Stayner, Prison Journalist Project
Dying Behind Bars: Another Form of Capital Punishment – Prisons are ill-equipped to handle their aging population, which has tripled in the past two decades.
Morris Grady started a 40 year sentence for robbery and attempted murder at age 57 and is ineligible for parole until he reaches age 85, a shattering realization when the impact of prison on aging is realized. “Morris is one of hundreds of thousands of prisoners who are growing old in U.S. prisons and might die there. The country’s overall prison population peaked at roughly 1.6 million people in 2009. Though the overall number of incarcerated people has been decreasing ever since, the number of older people in prison has been increasing… There were only 48,000 people aged 55 and older incarcerated in 2001, according to the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics. That number jumped to 154,000 by 2019, the most recent year for which data is available. This population also makes up a much larger share of prison deaths than it once did, going from 34 percent of total prison deaths in 2001 to 63 percent of deaths in 2019.” https://theappeal.org/aging-prison-healthcare-death-by-incarceration/
Associated Press (US) – Summer Ballentine and Jim Salter
Embattled 1st Black St. Louis prosecutor Kim Gardner resigns – Embattled St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner is resigning effective June 1 amid calls from Republican leaders for her ouster
Besides the usual nastiness between Republicans and Democrats in the state of Kentucky there is a new element. Kim Gardner, St. Louis Circuit Attorney, is facing a hearing in September to remove her from office but even then the state’s Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey has begun legislation to appoint a special violent crimes prosecutor who would effectively remove much of Gardner’s authority to do her job. “Some of these attacks seem designed to stop the office from functioning, at the expense of public safety,” says Gardner. https://apnews.com/article/st-louis-prosecutor-kim-gardner-6a1051eec47bf7c2e423c8def86e23e5?taid=64542980f925b1000105f273&utm_campaign=TrueAnthem&utm_medium=AP&utm_source=Twitter
ABC News (US) – Mark Rivera and Megan Hawkins
The Last Mile program teaches Indiana inmates to code for successful re-entry to society
“The Last Mile” is the name given to the educational outreach to incarcerated persons in Indiana and in seven other US states. These persons participant in a year-long course intended to prepare them with a skill set for a digital world and it happens in what appears much like any high school computer lab. “The Last Mile is a year-long intensive coding course which equips incarcerated individuals with the skills they need to both transition into a job in the high-demand tech field, but also help integrate them back into society in a meaningful way and potentially with a new worldview.” https://abc7chicago.com/prison-coding-the-last-mile-indiana/13216582/ Related article: The Marshall Project Closing Argument – Jamiles Lartey Connecticut Normalized Clemency. Not Anymore – After commuting nearly 100 sentences in less than two years, the state is facing a backlash. https://www.themarshallproject.org/2023/05/06/connecticut-incarceration-clemency-commutation-pardon-justice-reform