Yukon First Nations look at aboriginal sentencing reports

Yukon territorial court judge Michael Cozens says he welcomes reports on an aboriginal offender's life when sentencing.

The Council of Yukon First Nations and the Carcross Tagish First Nation are looking into the need for formal reports on aboriginal people being sentenced in Yukon courts.

Known as Gladue reports, they arose out of a B.C. court case in 1999.

The reports are meant to address the over-representation of aboriginal people in jails by giving judges more information about offenders before sentencing them.

Judges consider both aggravating and mitigating factors when sentencing.

Judge Cozens says it's helpful for him to know the background of the person appearing before him.

"This is a multi-generational issue, so it may have been the grandparents of the offender that is before me. These reports go back, tell me what was happening in these communities. Where was the change from their traditional community and aboriginal living to the kind of dysfunction that sometimes has brought this offender before the court," Cozens says.

Chantal Genier and Mark Stevens, who have both worked in aboriginal justice programs in Yukon, wrote the proposal to do a study on the need for a formal system for writing Gladue reports.

Stevens says between them they've written more than 50 reports over the past several years.

"They really look at how a person's life has been affected by systemic racism, so that's one important component of a Gladue report," Stevens says.

He says another part is that unlike pre-sentence reports written by probation officers, the Gladue reports are written by local people who know what resources are available in their communities to support the offender.

Genier adds local report writers have knowledge about what kind of life the offender has had.

"The effects of what's happened in that community on the people living in that community," she says.

Genier says the report writers are meant to be objective, not advocates.

"It's not about giving advantage to aboriginal people, it's about removing a disadvantage," she says.

Genier says for many offenders, the report writer will be the first person to ever listen to their life story and about how they ended up where they are.

"A lot of times, substance abuse is a factor in maybe helping that person to forget about victimization. And a lot of times other things can come out of substance abuse such as offending behaviour. It will hopefully allow for a better picture to be brought before the court," she says.

Genier believes the writers of these reports should be funded. 

The review is expected to be done by the end of March.