Province wraps up community consultations on African Nova Scotia Justice Plan

Feedback from 16 meetings will be used for a plan to tackle enduring issues, such as racism and marginalization, affecting Black citizens in the system

CITYnews halifax \ Michael Lightstone

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The last of provincewide, community consultation sessions the government set up to hear from African Nova Scotians on the province’s justice system was held in the Halifax region Tuesday night.

Provincial government employees have collected feedback from 16 meetings for a plan the province is developing to tackle enduring issues, such as racism and marginalization, affecting Black citizens in the system.

The meetings were closed to the media so attendees could speak frankly, a communications staffer said Monday.

A justice system plan might be ready by late this year or early in 2023.

For those who couldn’t attend the community consultations, the province posted a survey online called “Developing an African Nova Scotian Justice Plan.” Three questions in a row covered the relationship between Black residents and the police.

Another survey question asked this: “Where should government focus when seeking to address systemic racism in the justice system?”

The survey also asked questions about Black people applying for jobs in the provincial civil service.

“How can we attract more African Nova Scotians to positions in the justice system, such as police, correctional officers, sheriffs, etc.?”

An African Heritage Month event at Dalhousie University in 2020 was told the amount of trust Black communities have in their local police is “at zero.”

Since 2019, police officers in Nova Scotia haven’t been allowed to do street checks on people.

The ban followed a consultant’s report that said Black citizens in the Halifax area were stopped by police at a rate six times higher than white people.

According to a government release, African Nova Scotians are overrepresented in the province’s jails. Black people represent about 2.4 per cent of the general population but represented 11.4 per cent of people sent to a remand centre in 2020-21, the release says.

The Canadian Civil Liberties Association says anti-Black discrimination “impacts Black Canadians at every step of the criminal justice system.”

It says “while racism can be overt, malicious and intentional, it often works in much more subtle ways.”

In April 2021, the Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society acknowledged “the existence of systemic discrimination in our justice system and within the Society.”

Officials with the organization, which regulates the legal profession in the province, said on the group’s website an “external, independent” review of policies and processes would result in a report that provides findings and recommendations.

A Society spokesperson told CityNews Halifax last month an update on the review was presented to NSBS council in March. Acting executive director Jacqueline Mullenger said a final report could be filed around July or August.

Last July, the formation of a community-led justice organization, funded by the provincial government, was announced. The $4.8-million expenditure for the African Nova Scotian Justice Institute is to support Black residents, with outreach programs and other things, going through the legal system.

Also last summer, the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal ruled race and culture assessments of African Nova Scotian offenders must be used by judges when applying sentencing principles after criminal convictions.

Such assessments, the court’s decision said, “set a new table for sentencing offenders of African descent in a regime that has been shaped through an over-reliance on incarceration for Black offenders and their concomitant disproportionate representation in Canada’s prisons and jails.”

In 2020, then-Premier Stephen McNeil publicly apologized for systemic racism in this province’s justice system. He pledged to reform it.

“Our system of justice, from policing to courts to corrections, has failed many members of our Black community. A system that is supposed to keep you safe, but because of the colour of your skin, you fear it,” McNeil said.

In the 2021 provincial election, Tim Houston led his Progressive Conservatives to victory over the incumbent Liberals guided by Iain Rankin.

The Houston government announced the community consultations, which included a component focusing on youth, in March.

More feedback gathering is to take place later this year, a news release from the province said.

A senior policy analyst with the Department of Justice told CBC Radio in May that recommendations, and a plan, are months away.

Micah MacIsaac said department officials will “probably take about a month” to prepare and release a report based on the recent community consultations.

“That report goes live, it goes public,” he told CBC Radio, “and we want people to have a bit of time to digest it and see it. And then we would re-engage for another 16 sessions.”

MacIsaac said after the two rounds of consultation, “hopefully by the end of December (or) early January, (the government would) have something that would look like recommendations within a plan.”

To access the province’s justice plan survey, go here.

Michael Lightstone is a freelance reporter living in Dartmouth