Hey cool another thread for white people to complain about how stacked the system is against them.
I know you as well as the other smug white liberals that populate this site like to deflect discussions like this with recycled trash like above the but what's being discussed has nothing to do with system being stacked against anyone. It's just a question if the color of a person's skin should factor in to sentencing for any crimes of any kind.
Last edited by Erick Estrada; 04-26-2017 at 12:29 PM.
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I know you as well as the other smug white liberals that populate this site like to deflect discussions like this with recycled trash like above the but what's being discussed has nothing to do with system being stacked against anyone. It's just a question if the color of a person's skin should factor in to sentencing for any crimes of any kind.
So let me get this right. You are insinuating that race does in fact play a role in sentencing. If that's the case then the problem lies in the people making those decisions and no change in the law to consider "race" will matter. Correct?
So let me get this right. You are insinuating that race does in fact play a role in sentencing. If that's the case then the problem lies in the people making those decisions and no change in the law to consider "race" will matter. Correct?
When management wants employees to comply with a procedure, they don't just casually mention it and go "Oh well most of them follow it already maybe this will spur the rest to follow along!", they make a damn rule and enforce it so everyone follows it. When someone is out of compliance, they then have set precedence to deal with it.
Are people confusing racism from judges with racism in the last 100 years against black people? This isn't just about racist or biased judges, it's about the racism they've had to deal with their entire lives along with the racism their parents dealt with that put them behind the 8 ball.
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When management wants employees to comply with a procedure, they don't just casually mention it and go "Oh well most of them follow it already maybe this will spur the rest to follow along!", they make a damn rule and enforce it so everyone follows it. When someone is out of compliance, they then have set precedence to deal with it.
Simplified, but the same process applies here.
It's not a rule though. If you make it black and white that color must play a role in sentencing then it's discrimination. Telling them it can be a consideration in sentencing is lipstick on a pig if you believe that the people making the decisions are already inherently biased.
It's not a rule though. If you make it black and white that color must play a role in sentencing then it's discrimination. Telling them it can be a consideration in sentencing is lipstick on a pig if you believe that the people making the decisions are already inherently biased.
And that brings us to the crux of the matter.
I don't believe all judges are biased, however it may cause those that are (consciously or not) to consider bias when sentencing. Additionally, if a review of a judge showing bias/non-bias occurs, this will set more guidelines for expectation within the Canadian justice system.
If you take issue with the effectiveness of a recommendation, that is a completely valid point, but not one that's really being made in this thread. Mostly, ya'll are arguing against the need to consider that non-whites may face systemic discrimination, which is completely crazy.
I love how people are complaining about this when Black people have been subject to racism and unfair jailing in American Jails for decades upon decades.
It has been proven that a black person will spend more time in jail for the same crime as a white person and then comes along lawyers who not only want to get rid of the racism in the courts, they want the judges to consider the racism they've faced their entire lives as well as the entire lives of their parents and grandparents and now people are outraged.
I don't see any problem with this. A lot of the crimes the people of the black community commit is a direct result of the way they've been treated for hundreds of years.
why are you painting all people of colour with the same brush? not all black people in Canada grew up here and were victims of racism their entire lives, and have been for hundreds of years.
people do come here form other countries you know, and they commit crimes.
you can't just say "black". that doesn't mean anything without proper context.
or should the judge also take into account the country of origin and their cultural norms when deciding on sentencing? maybe the rule of law in the countries they came from?
in general, do women and white people of middle class or upper class get more leniency than poor persons of colour? of course they do. and it isn't right.
but the answer to this isn't by some knee-jerk white guilt response and a blanket law.
taking into account an individuals upbringing would be more appropriate than just taking into account the persons colour.
besides, you're so concerned about black people. how about other "colors"?
haven't the Chinese, Japanese, pakistani people, etc, also faced racism for hundreds of years? you don't care about them?
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It's an appeal to emotion that he's trying to disguise as rationalism.
I don't think it actually was. I read it as an argument to people who think policy in this area should be dictated by outcomes (which to be clear I'm not saying is the wrong approach). E.g., "aboriginal people are vastly overrepresented in Canadian prisons, what policy can we implement to ameliorate those outcomes". He was simply pointing out one outcome of the policy under discussion that would need to be taken into account.
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Originally Posted by GordonBlue
you can't just say "black". that doesn't mean anything without proper context.
And that's not what's being called for here. They're basically talking about using Gladue reports for black people, not just aboriginal offenders. Those things don't just say, "this guy's ancestry is XYZ", they provide personal historical background for the judge to consider. In other words, the proper context.
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Last edited by CorsiHockeyLeague; 04-26-2017 at 01:23 PM.
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After reading through the article, what it comes down to for me is this:
In every sentencing, judges should consider as many factors as possible, but maintain a consistency in how those factors are weighted. That includes culture and community, in all cases. But a judge is going to typically be far more familiar with white cultural experiences and community than, say, the Nova Scotian African community discussed in the article. I can see cultural assessments as filling a gap in information here.
In one case discussed, the judge gave meaningful consideration to the assessment, but did not accept that the cultural assessment automatically applied to the defendant, nor did it lower the standard of moral culpability. That sounds like a sane and sober decision-making process by the judge and a sign that the court worked more or less as it should have here.
In the other case, it had more of an impact with the judge opting not to sentence a youth as an adult, because she found that he was “an immature, dependent 16 year old caught up in the dysfunctional dynamics of his community, dynamics that are relevant to my understanding of his context, background, and choices.” That's a sentencing decision that a judge could just as easily make about a white kid from, say, an abusive, dysfunctional home.
The difference is that the judge might not have been able to appreciate the environment the defendant is from without the cultural assessment. If the cultural assessment makes up for that gap in knowledge and allows judges to make well-informed decisions, I fail to see what the problem is.
Besides, from what I can tell, there's nothing that prevents a white defendant from requesting a cultural assessment as part of their defense strategy, either. It's up to the judge whether they feel that the assessment is useful enough to pursue, and then whether it contains anything that affects their judgement.
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I don't believe all judges are biased, however it may cause those that are (consciously or not) to consider bias when sentencing. Additionally, if a review of a judge showing bias/non-bias occurs, this will set more guidelines for expectation within the Canadian justice system.
If you take issue with the effectiveness of a recommendation, that is a completely valid point, but not one that's really being made in this thread. Mostly, ya'll are arguing against the need to consider that non-whites may face systemic discrimination, which is completely crazy.
Not sure if there's a real solution as even the best and brightest humans are vulnerable to making human mistakes of human nature. At the end of the day the justice system should be focused on upholding the rules of the law. It's not perfect but I'm not sure things like this are going to make it better. As the victim I would think it may be hard to accept that a crime committed against you isn't sentenced the way it may be against someone else because of the color of the skin of the perpetrator.
You can make the ratio of judges race and gender based to represent the population but that doesn't work unless all genders and races are committing crimes proportional to their populations which we know isn't the case. I think you have to have faith in people in these roles making better, more informed decisions or purge some of the older judges that may be set in their ways. It wasn't long ago that lots of people were dead set against same sex marriage but people have really come around over the past to the point it's a non-issue to all but extremists. I believe that we can change but it's just not going to happen overnight and IMO setting the laws up to be more lenient towards certain races will create issues for victims as well as fuel the fire of extremists and create more resentment.
Last edited by Erick Estrada; 04-26-2017 at 01:41 PM.
why are you painting all people of colour with the same brush? not all black people in Canada grew up here and were victims of racism their entire lives, and have been for hundreds of years.
people do come here form other countries you know, and they commit crimes.
you can't just say "black". that doesn't mean anything without proper context.
or should the judge also take into account the country of origin and their cultural norms when deciding on sentencing? maybe the rule of law in the countries they came from?
in general, do women and white people of middle class or upper class get more leniency than poor persons of colour? of course they do. and it isn't right.
but the answer to this isn't by some knee-jerk white guilt response and a blanket law.
taking into account an individuals upbringing would be more appropriate than just taking into account the persons colour.
besides, you're so concerned about black people. how about other "colors"?
haven't the Chinese, Japanese, pakistani people, etc, also faced racism for hundreds of years? you don't care about them?
Your post makes absolutely zero sense. Because I am concerned with racism against black people, that must mean I don't care about the "Japanese, Chinese, and Pakistani" people? Get a grip.
In the other case, it had more of an impact with the judge opting not to sentence a youth as an adult, because she found that he was “an immature, dependent 16 year old caught up in the dysfunctional dynamics of his community, dynamics that are relevant to my understanding of his context, background, and choices.” That's a sentencing decision that a judge could just as easily make about a white kid from, say, an abusive, dysfunctional home.
The difference is that the judge might not have been able to appreciate the environment the defendant is from without the cultural assessment. If the cultural assessment makes up for that gap in knowledge and allows judges to make well-informed decisions, I fail to see what the problem is.
Besides, from what I can tell, there's nothing that prevents a white defendant from requesting a cultural assessment as part of their defense strategy, either. It's up to the judge whether they feel that the assessment is useful enough to pursue, and then whether it contains anything that affects their judgement.
Okay, that makes sense.
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