Community groups push restorative justice for racialized Winnipeggers
CBC
Community groups in Winnipeg are pushing for a more restorative approach to policing and prosecuting racialized communities in Winnipeg.
An event on Saturday organized by the Social Planning Council of Winnipeg (SPCW) and other community groups saw the release of a new report and manual that looks to highlight "the lived realities of safety, trust, and community belonging for racialized and newcomer youth in Winnipeg."
The "Community Solutions for Safety for Racialized Newcomer Youth in Winnipeg," report, published this month by the Immigration Partnership Winnipeg, collected first-hand accounts from 76 youth between the ages of 13 and 35.
The youth came from diverse immigrant, ethnocultural, educational, gendered and socioeconomic backgrounds, each having unique lived experiences and views on safety in the city, including the local police force and justice system.
Report authors Darrien Morton and Matt Fast found that some youth wanted more police protection while others wanted officers to stay away – and some didn't want to talk about police at all. Meanwhile, community leaders described their exhaustion and frustration with "performative police engagement."
"What communities asked for, more than anything, was accountability. A safe presence. Someone to turn to. And what's even better, adequate resources," Morton and Fast wrote.
The report shows that racialized, newcomer and Indigenous communities in Winnipeg, and those who were born here to immigrant parents often find systems like policing and the courts system to be "distant, ineffective, or even unsafe," SPCW said.
Writers Morton and Fast said there was a widely-held belief among the youth that "police have more unchecked power than most people can imagine," which makes the prospect of changing that system seem "distant or unrealistic."
Those issues are leading to the continued overrepresentation of racialized persons and groups in the criminal justice system, including immigrant and Indigenous communities, according to the report.
The manual was released after a three-year, three-phase project that began in 2021, launched after several fatal police encounters in Manitoba.
A 2020 analysis by CBC News found that most fatal police encounters involved Indigenous people.
The goals of the project did change over time, as SPCW says originally they were hoping to improve trust between Indigenous, Black, and racialized newcomer communities and the Winnipeg Police Service through a 'Community Safety and Inclusion Office' or 'Hub.'
Due to "deep divisions and concerns about policing," however, SPCW says the project pivoted to focus on understanding how racialized newcomers and specifically newcomer youth perceive safety, trust, and justice reform in Winnipeg.
The study also looks at questions about if more police on the streets would improve safety or cause more harm, and if trust can even be built between communities and the police, or if the relationship is permanently "broken."
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