There Criminal Justice system in Canada while flawed and in need of an over-haul, is a system that was purportedly designed to “ensure public safety by protecting society from those who break the law“. However, not everything that is designed to fulfill a certain mandate or goal lives up to what it promised or promises to do.

There are a disproportionate rate of minorities (based on race, housing status, mental health status for example) who are incarcerated, arrested or who even have contact with the police. Apparently, these people are inherently dangerous and “society” (white, affluent, sane people) needs to be protected from them. Positioning people often labeled as minorities as being opposite from white, affluent, sane people is the same thing as saying that “society” is different from or opposite from people who are involved in the criminal justice system. That people in the criminal justice system are deviant, that there is something wrong with them (not the system) and therefore, if you are involved in the criminal justices system, you do not belong or deserve to belong to society.

The number of things that people with a criminal record have to face once they have that record is no joke either. Forced self-disclosure of your record when applying for work or risk being outed when you are asked for a criminal record check. The types of jobs or even places you can live are restricted. Circles of friends and family change their opinion(s) or cut ties. There is a need to re-invent yourself but there is usually a lack of understanding and acceptance and therefore a lack of space to do so. These realities are shitty outcomes that prevent people from moving past a criminal record or a past they may not want to be associated with. They are also things the criminal justices system does not care about.

People often make changes despite the criminal justice system; not because of it. Or they have access to resources – social capital – that make it possible for them to move away from situations or contexts where crime is considered a viable option. Not everyone has this option.

These realities are also not my fault nor are they the fault of anyone who has experience sexual abuse and/or assault at the hands of an intimate partner, a complete stranger or anyone in between. For me, the shittiest reality of all is that incarceration does not equal rehabilitation and because of the high value of punishment and segregation, often makes a situation worse. This means, a situation where an individual who values misogyny, subscribes to rape culture or believes that gender-based violence (including sexual assault) is OK or even justified will likely not learn to do anything different when or after they are locked up.

I also question the notion of social capital as a tool for change for people who willingly assault others because they can. Similar to Trump’s open admission of sexually assaulting young (even underage) women by grabbing them ‘by the pussy’ simply because he feels he can (and clearly gets away with it). In fact, social capital likely contributes to higher rates of sexualized violence where often protecting the reputation of the person committing assault leads to social networks covering things up or the existing social capital (prestige, reputation, power, etc.) over-shadows the reality of what the person is really like behind closed doors or in the family home. The criminal justice does not care about these things. It cares about what tangible ‘evidence’ is present so that it can be certain, beyond a reasonable doubt, that someone indeed committed a crime and needs to be punished (an approach that, as I stated at the start of this post, does not guarantee the safety of society). A rarity when the crime is sexual assault or when a public admission of grabbing women’s pussies without consent is not considered evidence.

The criminal justice system also does not care about what the victim thinks or what actually did have the most impact on them. My stunted ability to be vulnerable because of the extreme psychological and emotional violations that I endured Every. Single. Day. Are not violations under Canada’s criminal code. Ongoing lies and theft of my personal property, because we were ‘in a relationship’ are not violations of the criminal code. The humiliation and gaslighting and destruction of my dignity are also not violations of the criminal code. All of these things put my psychological, emotional, financial and physiological safety at risk but it is clear that the criminal justice system is concerned with physical (and therefore visible) types of harms. The smart ones fuck you up without actually physically touching you. I am starting to think that the criminal justice system willingly fails to acknowledge the deep scars of trauma and the decades of harm that that ensue as a result because to acknowledge them would require resources that are beyond what is possible to provide. For the criminal justice system to recognize these non-physical harms would mean that it is taking on the social ills of Canadian society. But is that not what it purports to do anyway? ….

Until next time.