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Bezig met laden... Peace and Good Order: The Case for Indigenous Justice in Canada (editie 2019)door Harold R Johnson (Auteur)
Informatie over het werkPeace and Good Order: The Case for Indigenous Justice in Canada door Harold R. Johnson
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"An urgent, informed, intimate condemnation of the Canadian state and its failure to deliver justice to Indigenous people by national bestselling author and former Crown prosecutor Harold R. Johnson. "The night of the decision in the Gerald Stanley trial for the murder of Colten Boushie, I received a text message from a retired provincial court judge. He was feeling ashamed for his time in a system that was so badly tilted. I too feel this way about my time as both defence counsel and as a Crown prosecutor; that I didn't have the courage to stand up in the court room and shout 'Enough is enough.' This book is my act of taking responsibility for what I did, for my actions and inactions."--Harold R. Johnson. In early 2018, the failures of Canada's justice system were sharply and painfully revealed in the verdicts issued in the deaths of Colten Boushie and Tina Fontaine. The outrage and confusion that followed those verdicts inspired former Crown prosecutor and bestselling author Harold R. Johnson to make the case against Canada for its failure to fulfill its duty under Treaty to effectively deliver justice to Indigenous people, worsening the situation and ensuring long-term damage to Indigenous communities. In this direct, concise, and essential volume, Harold R. Johnson examines the justice system's failures to deliver "peace and good order" to Indigenous people. He explores the part that he understands himself to have played in that mismanagement, drawing on insights he has gained from the experience; insights into the roots and immediate effects of how the justice system has failed Indigenous people, in all the communities in which they live; and insights into the struggle for peace and good order for Indigenous people now."-- Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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Google Books — Bezig met laden... GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)323.4208997071Social sciences Political Science Civil and political rights The state and the individual Equality before the law; justice, etc.LC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde:
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Harold Johnson is a member of Montreal Lake Cree Nation. He’s also a writer, a graduate of Harvard Law School, and a retired Crown prosecutor, who spent a good part of his career working in “the high-crime communities of northern Saskatchewan.” His book, Peace and Good Order, is a response to Colten Boushie’s case and innumerable other examples of failed Canadian “justice”, some of which he holds himself accountable for. At the time of the decision in the Gerald Stanley trial, one of Johnson’s friends, a retired Caucasian provincial court judge, told him that the case shamefully drove home just “how stacked the system is against Indigenous Canadians.”
Johnson cites a number of telling statistics up front, a few of which I’m listing here:
• Although Indigenous people comprise only 4.3% of Canada’s population, they represent 28% of the total federal in-custody population.
• The Indigenous inmate population in Canada increased by 42.8% from March 2009 to March 2018.
• The province of Saskatchewan has the highest crime rate in Canada, and it incarcerates more youth per capita than any other province.
• In 2015-2016, Saskatchewan had a daily average of 1,812 people
in custody. Of those, 1,378 or 76% of them were Indigenous, yet Indigenous Peoples account for only 16.3% of Saskatchewan’s population overall.
• While the US has the highest incarceration rate in the world (with more than 700 of every 100,000 people in prison), the incarceration rate of the Indigenous population in Saskatchewan is higher than that of the US: about 786 out of every 100,000.
• According to a 2002 report from Canada’s Solicitor General, incarceration does not reduce crime. In fact, harsher penalties were found to increase the likelihood that offenders would commit crimes in the future.
Johnson looks at a number of factors behind the high rates of Indigenous crime and incarceration. As a defense lawyer and then a prosecutor he’s seen a lot. Almost all offences committed by Indigenous people are fuelled by trauma and by alcohol, he says. Regarding the latter, we’re not talking about compulsive drinkers—that is, alcoholics—but about basically good people who do terrible, stupid things when they drink. Johnson personally knows whereof he speaks. He has lost two brothers to drunk drivers.
Hillary Cook, an Indigenous man grieving the loss of his wife, drank himself almost into oblivion one night, got into his truck, and hit Johnson’s brother Garry, who was walking home after babysitting his grandchildren. At the driver’s trial, Johnson spoke powerfully about Garry’s life and contributions to family and community, but he argued that Hillary, a good man, not be incarcerated. Redemption—making amends and healing the wounds one has caused—is the Indigenous way of justice. If Hillary remained in the community, he could assist with the care of Brennan, a difficult-to-manage young man with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, whom Garry had been looking after. Hillary could help teach the younger members of Garry’s family how to live off the land, and he could also care for his own vulnerable teenaged granddaughter who had been living with him since her friend had committed suicide. But no: the judge sentenced Hillary to three years in prison. During that time, Brennan also ended up in prison.
Johnson packs a great deal into his slim, thought-provoking book. I feel I really can’t do it justice. Particularly interesting to me were Johnson’s thoughts on historical treaties between First Nations and the Crown. Some Indigenous people and legal experts (including Johnson, who is both) find that Canadian common law, rooted in British common law, carries legal notions of private property that are incompatible with Indigenous legal traditions and understanding of the reciprocal relationship between humans and the land. The idea of owning the earth would have been incomprehensible to the First Nations’ signatories of these treaties. Pointing to the 1996 report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples which recommended that federal, provincial, and territorial governments recognize the right of Aboriginal nations to establish and administer their own systems of justice, Johnson advocates for Indigenous people reclaiming jurisdiction. The dominant culture’s legal system is based not on rehabilitation and redemption, but deterrence. Statistics prove it doesn’t work: recidivism rates are extremely high. Johnson writes convincingly about the ways in which prisons have replaced residential schools. He shows how incarceration only breeds more incarceration. After months or years in prison, people are returned to their communities more broken and dysfunctional than they were when they left; they frequently reoffend. Reclamation of jurisdiction needs to happen soon, Johnson writes, as the increasing violence and hopelessness in Indigenous communities and the growing rates of incarceration are pointing to a terrible end: extermination. ( )