Professor Benjamin Perrin, author of "Indictment: The Criminal Justice System on Trial," challenges 'tough on crime' policies, highlights systemic flaws, and explores solutions to reimagine a justice system that heals rather than punishes with host Aaron Pete.
Benjamin Perrin is a professor at the Peter A. Allard School of Law at the University of British Columbia. He has served in the Prime Minister’s Office as in-house legal counsel and lead policy advisor on criminal justice and public safety. He was also a law clerk at the Supreme Court of Canada. He is the national best-selling author of Overdose: Heartbreak and Hope in Canada’s Opioid Crisis (Penguin Random House, 2020). His latest book and podcast is Indictment: The Criminal Justice System on Trial (University of Toronto Press).
Order Indictment Here: https://utorontopress.com/9781487533731/indictment/
Professor Benjamin Perrin, author of "Indictment: The Criminal Justice System on Trial," challenges 'tough on crime' policies, highlights systemic flaws, and explores solutions to reimagine a justice system that heals rather than punishes with host Aaron Pete.
Benjamin Perrin is a professor at the Peter A. Allard School of Law at the University of British Columbia. He has served in the Prime Minister’s Office as in-house legal counsel and lead policy advisor on criminal justice and public safety. He was also a law clerk at the Supreme Court of Canada. He is the national best-selling author of Overdose: Heartbreak and Hope in Canada’s Opioid Crisis (Penguin Random House, 2020). His latest book and podcast is Indictment: The Criminal Justice System on Trial (University of Toronto Press).
Order Indictment Here: https://utorontopress.com/9781487533731/indictment/
Welcome back to another episode of the Bigger than.
Tim McAlpine:Me podcast.
Benjamin Perrin:Here is your host, Aaron P.
Tim McAlpine:As a native court worker, I'm passionate about the criminal justice system. Today we explore concepts like tough on crime, trauma, incarceration rates and the overrepresentation of Indigenous people. I'm speaking with the author of Indictment the Criminal Justice System on Trial. My guest today is Professor Benjamin Perrin. Professor Perrin, such a privilege to be sitting down with you again. I had the opportunity to have a class with you. I'm wondering if you wouldn't mind introducing yourself for listeners who might not have heard of you.
Benjamin Perrin:Yeah, sure, thanks for having me on, aaron. It's great to see you again. I'm Ben Perrin, a law professor at UBC, and I do work mainly in the areas of criminal justice, and what's unique about my work is I spend a lot of time actually talking to people who are impacted by these issues, and that's led me to have a real transformation in my own thinking on things, and I'm excited to share that more broadly with people.
Tim McAlpine:Brilliant, because that's exactly where I want to start. You were a criminal justice advisor to Stephen Harper and it sounds like you went through a renaissance or reflection on what your position was. Would you mind outlining perhaps where you started, because I think there's such value when people reflect on their own opinions, their own viewpoints and are able to grow as an experience. I think in a polarizing time that can be particularly difficult for people to do and I found you approached that so admirably.
Benjamin Perrin:Yeah, I think that for me, I went through a real change in both my heart and my head Ten years ago when I was working in Ottawa in the prime minister's office as his chief legal advisor and lead criminal justice advisor. I had three general strong beliefs about the criminal justice system. One was that it wasn't treating victims fairly or appropriately. Two, that it was too lenient on offenders, that we needed to have harsher penalties and punishments for them. And three, that it was too slow and inefficient. And two of those three things I still think are true. I think that the system doesn't treat victims or survivors anywhere near where it should. The interesting thing about that is, as you talk to victims and survivors and as you read the research about what they really want generally speaking and this isn't for everyone, obviously, but generally speaking it's not harsher punishment. They want more information, timely information. They want to participate and be involved in the process more, and so that was really part of my work that brought me to Ottawa and in that time, proposed the idea of a victims' bill of rights, which we now have, even though there's some serious issues with it. So that's that sort of thread through my career over the last 20 years really in criminal justice has been consistent, but it's really changed in how I've understood it and developed it. The slowness and the inefficiencies of the system also something which is still true and I think everyone would agree with, but why it's slown and efficient my understanding that's changed dramatically.
Benjamin Perrin:And then the third one that I used to think the system was just too lenient. If only we had harsher penalties, longer jail terms, more deterrence, lock people up. As we're hearing now there's a real resurgence of this, what I call tough on crime agenda, tough on crime 2.0. That is where I have undergone the most significant transformation in the last decade a complete 180, really, on everything from drug policy which my last book, overdose, was about, to now in this book, indictment, seeing that actually more police doesn't make us safer. Incarceration actually increases reoffending, like we need new and better ways. So that's the kind of intellectual process, but it was a really human process. I mean, I didn't start out believing these things and I didn't change my views just because I read some more articles or books.
Tim McAlpine:I'm wondering if we can explore where these positions come from because, as you said, we're seeing a resurgence in them and I want to start with really understanding that perspective first. Can you steelman the argument? We're hearing Pierre Polyev start to make these same kind of claims. What basis is this on? Because right now I'm thinking of during the Harper years in Canada, crime was decreasing and there is this felt sense that things have gone up in crime and that we're seeing more people struggling. Things aren't going as well and he is putting this at the foot of we're not being tough enough on crime and there's a lot of counterpoints. Can you lay out what his position is, or at least what the conservative perception is on crime and how we should approach it?
Benjamin Perrin:Well, I think they're doing that for themselves. But when I would step back and say why are voters buying in not always, but often buying into this tough on crime agenda? What is tough on crime? Basically, it means that when we see rising crime rates are what's referred to as disorder in the community. What that really means is people are seeing homeless people or maybe there's some public drug use. They're not feeling safe. They may be quite safe, but they feel very uncomfortable. There's a difference between not feeling safe and just being uncomfortable In our society. Right now we have massive inflation, skyrocketing housing prices and really an epidemic of poverty and homelessness that is not being effectively addressed. We have an epidemic of substance use and unregulated drug deaths which is not being addressed through the evidence. This has all been bundled up into one ball, the answer that the advocates of a tough on crime agenda have which is, by the way, not just federal and provincial conservatives, but you even see sometimes liberal and NDP politicians getting sucked into it as well and playing that game. We see that here in BC a little bit with Premier David EB. We saw in Ontario one of the Ontario Liberals with Michael Bryant, who openly talks about how he was a tough on crime liberal.
Benjamin Perrin:Tough on crime is more police. No one's getting out or fewer people are going to get on a bail. Prison sentences are going to be longer. Conditions are going to be harsher, forcing treatment for people in terms of whether it's mental health or substance use. Essentially, it's a punitive system. That's the basis for it. Why do people buy that? Well, it works. It works. It doesn't work all the time, but it works a lot of the time. The reason is that people are afraid. It preys on your fear. It also gives you a quick and easy answer.
Benjamin Perrin:Not everyone's buying into it, though we can see. For example, here in the city of Vancouver, where I live, we have a mayor who came in with a promise of 100 new police officers. People voted for that. They voted for it. Now we're paying for it. We have record-breaking property tax increases. We're paying for it. Then we go. Is this going to work? Is it going to work? The answer is no.
Benjamin Perrin:The research shows that increasing the number of police does not decrease your crime rate. The two are not correlated. That's really because, if you unpack that, the issues that we're dealing with are not going to be solved through handcuffs and batons. When someone's in a mental health crisis and you send a police officer there, it's much more likely to escalate rather than de-escalate. That's on policing, on prisons.
Benjamin Perrin:We see this now, this call for the saying a slogan is jail not bail. A much more accurate policy slogan would be with jail we fail. Because, when we look at the studies on this, prison increases recidivism. Why does it do that? Well, it's basically like getting a PhD in crime. People go in and they come out way worse than they were before. The average person exiting prison is even 14 years after. Their median income is $0. Their average experiences are unemployed. They don't get vocational training. They don't get trauma counseling. They don't get substance, effective substance recovery. The cycle of trauma and violence is perpetuated by the very system that is supposed to make us safer. Tough on crime is ineffective, costly and deadly. It doesn't work.
Tim McAlpine:I really appreciate that because I think there's a value in going through what we're hearing and then diving into your book Indictment, which is coming out October 3rd, and exploring how this started, what got you interested in this topic and what made you want to bring this to light for people.
Benjamin Perrin:Yeah, I was going about my life around five years ago and teaching criminal law class. I forgot what year you were in the class, though. What year was that we had international law together? Yeah, okay.
Tim McAlpine:So what year was that? Though? That would have been mid-pandemic, so 2021.
Benjamin Perrin:2021. Okay, great. So I'm right in the midst of the research that I was doing at that point for this book. It was a little bit earlier than that, though, so it was five years ago.
Benjamin Perrin:I often will get mail from just random folks. It's not surprising, right? It's cost too much for most people to afford a lawyer, so they write to a law professor asking for help. So I get letters like that on occasion, and all of us do so.
Benjamin Perrin:It didn't surprise me when I went to the mailbox and pulled this letter out. It was a handwritten letter from an Indigenous man who was being incarcerated in here in British Columbia, and it went up for seven or eight pages. And what was different about this letter is I don't remember him asking me for anything. All that the letter was was him telling his story, and, to be completely honest, there I kind of wish he had just asked for legal help, because I would have been wazer to deal with. I'd be like oh, I'm a full-time professor, I'm not practicing right now, but here's like a legal aid or a prisoner's advocacy group you can go to, and there's groups like that that do great work, but there's not enough. Not enough with a number of resources, so it was actually a lot harder. I couldn't just punt it right, I had to actually read it again and it was.
Benjamin Perrin:It was haunting, this one line that I it stands out like it burned in my brain literally, like I memorized that I didn't go back and reread this thing, looking for this quote years later. I remember it from the moment I read it. That's how powerful this was. And he said if you want to turn a man into an animal, put him in a cage without the resources to build himself back up. And that hit me like a, like a two by four across the head and you know I could. Just. There was something very real and visceral about his experience. There's something about a handwritten letter I don't know about you, but I don't get many handwritten letters these days and he wrote this from a jail cell and he sent it and you mailed it and it came to me and I and it was the spark for this project. And he's that he is really the reason why I Started on this, this, this, this project, to try to understand how was, beyond the statistics which we all know, how is the criminal justice system affecting Canadians, people who are incarcerated like that indigenous man, people who are survivors of crime, people, it turns out, who are both survivors and people of committed offenses, and our broader communities.
Benjamin Perrin:And so that's what. That's what I set out to do, and the big research question for me came as well that year Jody Wilson-Raybould, who was, as you know, canada's first, and today only, indigenous Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada. They did a big, broad public consultation and, and one of the questions that they asked was if you could Design a new criminal justice system from scratch, what would it look like? So, on the one hand, I've got this letter from this indigenous man in incarcerated, and then I've got this, this provocative, like, really like, once in a generation question, and so that was the this, what kickstarted this whole project for this book indictment.
Tim McAlpine:I love that because really great writing comes from an honest question. It doesn't come from a pre-planned. This is how it's all going to lay out and the way that you process this seems like it was. I want to get feedback from so many different people and I want to get to that. But I want to start with something you mentioned in the book which I think is so brilliant and so important, which is a quote from Harold Johnson about this whole idea of symposiums, meetings, having get-togethers, conferences, discussions.
Tim McAlpine:This is commonplace within the criminal justice system. It's commonplace in government, but it's commonplace within the criminal justice system of let's try and like break down this issue, let's try and break down this little area right here and go through it, and I thought you did an eloquent job of breaking that down for people, because there is claims that we're going to improve the system, but there's often so far removed from the reality of everyday people that the idea that a solution is going to come from the front end is very challenging to actually believe is going to work At scale across Canada, and I just I really admire that. Where did that come about for you? How did you find that quote and what did that mean to you?
Benjamin Perrin:Well, I was starting to develop with a couple of incredible Indigenous and non-indigenous colleagues. Are our course responding to the truth? And reconciliation calls action, specifically that law students learn About the ongoing impacts of settler, colon colonialism and residential schools, about the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous people, about Indigenous laws. So I was developing that course and through that, one of my colleagues, nigel Baker-Grenier and Teri Lynn Williams-Davidson and Darlene Johnson, some, you know, just absolutely Patricia Barcasca. So it's standing Indigenous scholars really leading people and I just like learning and listening and through the course of that I read a lot of materials because I needed to learn, I needed to. I'm supposed to teach the course I needed to learn and I'm still learning Right. And so that's where I came across Harold's book piece in good order, where he has that quote. I don't know if you've got the quote. It'd be great to read it for people to hear. I have it up here if you want me to, yeah.
Tim McAlpine:I think I'm going to read it.
Benjamin Perrin:If you want me to, yeah, let's read. I mean, I can't do it justice. If you got it, yeah.
Tim McAlpine:Stop holding conferences, stop with the symposiums. Give it up. You're wasting air. You haven't implemented modest tinkering. It looked like madness that you endlessly discuss. Your ideas are too little, too late, wrote Harold Johnson, a Harvard educated lawyer and member of the Montreal Lake Cree Nation, in his book peace in good order the case for Indigenous justice in Canada. His tough talk didn't stop there.
Benjamin Perrin:So I mean, I read that and I was like again, another two by four across the head. You know I, I've been to those events like I, I literally have sat in the cabinet room in Ottawa with the. Now, as a staffer, you don't get the first first steps on the food, you get the leftovers, but there were always some bacon leftovers, so you know I was a sucker for that. So the, the food there is, you know. And at the Supreme Court of Canada, at the, the receptions we have at our law school events law, don't get me started on the law firm events I remember as a law student going for a interview in at downtown Toronto Bay Street and there was a Hamburger okay, a hamburger. And remember this wasn't recently, I, like, I went to law school 20 years ago, so this is a while ago the hamburger itself was a hundred dollars and the law firm encouraged us to order it a $100 burger. And so you know I, I knew exactly what herald was talking about. We said you know, stop with this garbage. It is garbage and the reason it's garbage is that it is Making policy. It's putting people like me on cbc saying this is the expert and not the people who have lived their entire lives in the criminal justice system.
Benjamin Perrin:Who's an expert on incarceration? Someone who studies it from from, I'll say, from the ivory tower. You know, some of my colleagues and I do get out in the field, but how about? From an office? Okay, at least largely from an office, and there are some people who do Embedded research too, but it's it's an exception. It absolutely is still an exception in law. Who's who's? You know, more informed? Someone who who studies it? Or someone who's lived it? And so when we put out the posters to actually talk to people, herald says you've got to talk to indigenous people and the reason he's saying that and why so much of this book. If you add up to the chapters, the, the largest number of chapters focus on indigenous Issues, not just how the system has both overpoliced and under protected indigenous people, but also how indigenous justice Needs to be part of a new transformative justice vision and and if given the opportunity to flourish with confidence, we can say we'll get better outcomes.
Benjamin Perrin:So the the reasons for that, of course, are they are the statistics and many people know them, but some people don't. So I mean it's good to mention them briefly. Like 32 of federal incarcerated people are indigenous. If we look at just federal Females who are incarcerated, it's 50 percent are indigenous. If we look at the provincial prison system in provinces like Saskatchewan and Manitoba, into the 70 80 percent. And the most Shocking thing I found, as we we continue to follow the breadcrumbs down the trail, as it were, in 2019 and 2020, which I picked because it's right before covid, when things kind of went all haywire 100 percent, 100 percent of the female youth in custody in both Saskatchewan and Manitoba were indigenous teenage girls 100 for every single one, wow.
Benjamin Perrin:So when herald says you've got to talk to indigenous people, he's absolutely right and so he's. He's passed away now, but he had made an indelible mark on me. I, I, I spoke to him at the privilege of both interviewing him for this book indictment and his Legacy really lives on in his own writings in peace and good order. And it was called fire water, which is about how alcohol Uh contributes to crime in, in not just indigenous communities but throughout the country. And, um, we even had him come and speak. So that course we developed for the truth and reconciliation commission. I'm like we got to get herald johnson to come speak and he spoke and you could, you could drop a pin. You could have dropped a pin and you know that room, right the forum, it's got you know 200 people or so sitting there and they're just like Tuned right into herald johnson sharing about his experience as an indigenous man, as a crown prosecutor, as a defense lawyer, and at the end of it he said to people when someone asked like, what can we do?
Benjamin Perrin:And his answer and I don't know if you swearing a lot on your podcast, I'll just close course and beat me out. Beat me out if you have to he said you've got to give a shit. You got to give a shit. That was his advice. That was. Those were the last words that I remember him speaking before he he died.
Benjamin Perrin:And when I heard he, I was driving home and I heard him on the cvc and I was so happy he was listening to this I'm herald's on because he's he really changed my views on so many things and I and I was so excited to hear and at the end they, I, they said that that was, that was an interview with him that aired years ago and that he had passed away that week and uh, I, I mean, I, I did cry. I mean, I didn't know that well, I was in a friend with him a matter of few times, but he had had that impact on me and the reason I cried is because I was like the world's lost someone who who did so much but was continuing to do so much. And he came to speak to 200 people while COVID was still going around and I believe he had lung cancer at the time advanced lung cancer and he came in despite his risk as someone. Think about that right and he's like I need to come in. This is an opportunity to share and to tell this story, and so I hope that more people will read his work, that more people will listen to the experience of Indigenous people, and I was so honored and grateful to the people who shared their stories Indigenous and non-Indigenous people and, as we, you know, how do you get people to share the story?
Benjamin Perrin:It was really simple. We literally had this research poster and it had one question. It was what was your experience like with the criminal justice system? And that went out to every victim and survivor organization and all of the organizations that support people who are incarcerated or charged that we could find through the Department of Justice databases, and so it was literally printed out and posted in halfway houses and in women's shelters and people started calling us immediately. This thing went, it went viral, so to speak, and we got completely overwhelmed.
Benjamin Perrin:People wanted to tell their stories and the incredible thing was, first of all, they, they, they wanted to tell the whole story, not just the story the criminal justice system asked, which is that this date and time. Did you do X? It takes. The criminal justice system is like looking at the world through a straw. It zeros in on a single point in time and then describes responsibility and punishment for that one moment rather than understanding the broader picture. Now I'm very clear in this book someone's experiences of things like trauma do not excuse their subsequent behavior. But if our interest is reducing harm in our society, we have to understand the things that contribute to harm in our society, and trauma plays a leading role.
Benjamin Perrin:The research shows that, and I sought time and time again as people told their stories. So yeah, today there may be a 38, a certain year, 39 year old person coming out of prison for drug trafficking sentence, but if you rewind the tape, they started getting incarcerated at age 12, age 12, which is the youngest, we started incarcerating people and I heard many folks incarcerated at that age and their lives were not at all like my life as a child. The trauma, the suffering, the abuse, not just by people in the community but by the system supposed to protect them, people horrifically abused in foster care and in the child welfare system, the experiences of people and youth detention. These are folks who also serve time in provincial and federal custody. Some of them said that the time in the youth was the worst, it was the most difficult of all of those because of the degree of isolation they experienced, because the fact that some of those institutions are coed, so young women, teenage girls, having to be coed with with with young men in these same institutions.
Benjamin Perrin:And you know, just being a child right, you're a child and the fear and the force that is used against children in our institutions and it is not widely known. And so the reason that I'm sharing these stories is because I can't keep men. I mean they have to come out. I wish we could share all the stories and that's partly why we don't just have the book but the podcast. But even then, you know, speaking to about three dozen folks, everyone informed, the research and the work and I just hope that people will be able to kind of go through a similar process. I went through to hear for yourself what people are experiencing as people of committed offenses, as survivors, and their ideas for how the system could have done better.
Tim McAlpine:I'd like to explore this idea of sharing stories and sharing experiences and what people have been to to your point. Many people have gone through hell prior to entering the criminal justice system, experienced things you cannot even imagine and had very dark days prior. I'm a pretty harsh critic on the podcast and in my life as a native court worker of Gladiou reports of First Nations court, and the reason being is because I do think that it's very easy to hear someone's story and then do exactly what you were going to do before.
Tim McAlpine:And my fear specifically with First Nations court is that it feels good to hear somebody else's trauma, what they've went through. It can feel like a rewarding experience to go wow, I had no idea I've learned so much and like that really made me feel something. So just being a bystander of these stories can make you feel like you were a part of something, healing. Even if you're going to bring about the same sentence you were going to bring about before. You feel like you were part of something. So people say, oh, it was amazing to be in First Nations court. It was so moving and it's like right, but are the outcomes different? What are the results? What are we seeing in terms of their long term benefits? Are they rehabilitating into the community? And my fear with them is it's making the courthouse the centerfold for resources. It's making it seem like this is the place you go to to heal. And I'm going to be honest and say I don't think the courthouse is where people heal. I think that's done one on one with a counselor. That's done in community resources connecting to recovery programs, treatment centers. It's not done when you go and hope that the judge is going to give you a sentence that sends you back out into the community, you want to be connected to those resources. My fear is that when we get people thinking, oh, I just go to court and get my resources, that's the wrong state of mind, and I had the privilege of speaking with Marion Buller, who helped bring about First Nations court, and commented that she was like, oh, some people wanted to reoffend so that they could come back to this community that we had created, and I have deep fears about that. With Gladiou reports, one of my fears is that we've fallen in love with Prong one of the Gladiou report, which is the story, because it lays everything out. And when I look at certain Gladiou reports over my time as a court worker, that resource section of like, what are we going to do about everything they've been through? Is razor thin friendship center, connect with the Chilliwack community services? Like it's not specific of we're going to send them to this program. It's a 10 week program. They're going to get these 10 benefits. This is what they've shown is their results. It's not research focused and evidence based.
Tim McAlpine:And my big fear is that it's so easy to tell the story and then skip the second step, which is what the heck are we going to do about it and I think I have this perspective because that's my role as a native court worker is to speak with the person, find out all of the things they're going through and then connect them with the resources long term so they can go and thrive, but not at court. I get to appear as their agent and appear for them so they don't have to come back next week to court, they don't have to come back in three weeks. If you're succeeding, if you're thriving, don't come back to this place. I will appear for you. And as long as you have updates I've done five sessions of counseling.
Tim McAlpine:I'm doing this then you're on the right track and I don't want you here. The second that you start to go off of that path and start to not participate and go I skipped a few sessions, I'm getting busy is when you need to see this big, scary place and say, okay, go back, you don't have to come back here and stay on your right path. And so I get concerned when we start to make these moves about the story, because I think sometimes it's easier to tell the story and not do anything about it, and I'm curious as to your perspective on that.
Benjamin Perrin:Yeah, there's so many things that I heard about where people heal and it's not in a settler court. Whether it's what are so-called First Nations or Indigenous courts, whether it's mental health courts, whether it's drug courts, they all rely on one thing at the end of the day they're all based on coercion. They're all based on the threat that if you don't do what we say, you're going to be locked up. That's the whole premise. So it's still very much within this mentality. The system is changing just enough to try to stay afloat. That's one of the theories that a number of people said. It's like an organism. So that's why I put the criminal justice system on trial. And as I was doing this book, I was like who's the villain in the story? There's a lot of harm happening here. Who's the cause of it? And it's the system, and that's what Harold talks about as well. Right, harold Johnson, he's like I tried to change the system, but the system ended up changing me. That was what he said, even as an Indigenous man working in the system. I think there's a couple of issues if we just zero in on. Let's talk about Gladiou reports a little bit and then about Indigenous or First Nations courts. First, on Gladiou reports. You know this, but for listeners it's been over. It was Gladiou decided 1999, I think so over 24 years now, a quarter of a century after the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Gladiou, which is really designed to ensure that all sentencing judges consider the unique circumstances of Indigenous people who are being sentenced.
Benjamin Perrin:And the second part, of course, is that piece you mentioned is what would be appropriate processes and measures and outcomes that could be different than incarceration, things that would work better because of the epidemic of Indigenous incarceration. And so it hasn't changed things. When we look at the graph, it's actually the rates continue to rise, and so it's not working. And one of the reasons it's not working is that we're at the very end of the process. So when someone's coming before the court and they have killed someone or assaulted someone or, you know, become a drug trafficker, this is at the very, very end of the line.
Benjamin Perrin:There were hundreds of opportunities, thousands of opportunities for society to intervene for, for the Canadian state to step back and just to recognize, affirm, appropriately, fund and support Indigenous communities and revitalizing their laws and customs and ways to bring, bring about healthier communities. So all of these things could have happened before, and so the analogy I have for this is like Gladiou is like if we were only going to deal with heart disease by just having heart surgeons and defibrillators who are available when someone has a heart attack. Right, because that's what we're at. At the point in the criminal justice system where someone's being sentenced, their life has reached a point of crisis, right, it's not a health crisis necessarily it could be but it's a crisis in their life that the system is, you know, being brought to bear on them. What does the medical system do? It turns out they actually spend a ton of time and effort and energy trying to prevent you from getting to that point. And so, yeah, we need to deal with folks at the point where they're at now, but we need to take a much broader perspective. So I guess that's the first thing and that's why Gladiou isn't working, because it happens at the very end. The other reason is it's still embedded in this settler, colonial system.
Benjamin Perrin:We know that Indigenous justice has been and continues to be practiced, in fact, across Canada in different Indigenous communities since time immemorial. There continue to be better ways that are more appropriate and fit with Indigenous peoples in their communities, and I'll just give two examples that we have really good data on. So if you look at Indigenous-led peacekeeping, others would call it policing, but it is different. But they're serving the function that otherwise it would be the RCMP usually. The research on Indigenous-led policing is that, not surprisingly, people have higher levels of satisfaction with Indigenous-led policing, and you see reduced crime rates by 25%.
Benjamin Perrin:One study found, when we look at Indigenous-led, what we would call in the Western world, indigenous-led corrections so these are within the federal correction system there are healing lodges. Some of them are run by Indigenous healing lodges. Some of them are run by correction service Canada, so they're run by the settler state. Others, though, are run by Indigenous nations, communities or organizations. So there's Indigenous-led healing lodges and there's corrections-led healing lodges. The Indigenous-led healing lodges and healing lodges in general. People come out of those and they do much better. They have lower reoffending rates.
Benjamin Perrin:But when an audit was done into funding and you're like well, why so, since you're doing so well, if Indigenous peacekeeping is doing so well, it has better results. And if Indigenous-led healing lodges are doing so well and have better results, why aren't they flourishing? And the answer comes down to one immediate cause and one broader cause. The immediate cause is chronic underfunding. So, like every other area that we look at where we see Indigenous people being set up to fail by federal and provincial governments whether it's clean water, whether it's education, whether it's healthcare, child welfare, now criminal justice we see chronic underfunding which eventually a human rights tribunal or a court will be asked to rule on, and time after time after time again rule amounts to unlawful discrimination. So we have successful claims in the courts now led by First Nations communities and nations against the federal government, and they have won.
Benjamin Perrin:Because of the short changing and per capita, indigenous-led policing is just funded with a fraction and it's considered a grant. It's just like oh, maybe we'll give it to you next year, even though it's an essential service. Likewise with the Indigenous-led healing lodges. Those are short changed massively, and so it's no surprise that it's much more difficult to get them going and they are literally set up to fail. And that is the thing that we see time and time again from all the different policies and programs of how we could do things differently, how we can get better results, how everyone can be safer. It comes down to these are being thwarted. Same thing with restorative justice better outcomes thwarted, chronically underfunded. So there seems to be this fixation on the way we've always done things, with judges and lawyers in courtrooms, with police, with handcuffs and guns, with locking people in prison, even though there's no evidence that that stuff actually makes it safer. In fact, the evidence is suggested of otherwise.
Tim McAlpine:Yeah, you can definitely see where people just go like lock them up, let's do something about it, let's get serious, and the idea of doing something in community just doesn't seem as as severe, as powerful. And that's where I think people's mindset goes when you're talking about unique ideas on how to approach it. I had the opportunity to visit Bella Bella and there they have isolation. They put people alone on an island by themselves for weeks, months and they bring food and make sure that they have stuff, but the stories of how people change when they return because that human connection is lost. But you're still connected with nature.
Benjamin Perrin:It's not in the fault. It's right, it's right, it's right, it's right, it's right, it's right.
Tim McAlpine:And terrifying stories, because when you're alone with yourself is when you get to really think and you get to process and start to figure out all the demons you have in your head, whether you're addicted to this or thinking about that or on a wrong path with this. You have to sit with yourself and there's no, there's nothing else to do, and so it's fascinating to see how we could go back to some of these approaches that can have such profound impacts. And when you're talking about this idea that this isn't where all the problems get solved, I couldn't agree with you more. It was actually one of the main reasons I chose to run for council for my community, because it felt like, yes, as much as and why I don't practice law is because it's so far behind where I could actually make a difference. That actually puts people in different circumstances.
Tim McAlpine:When we look at housing, my community had severe challenges with having repairs done, so homes were built in the 1980s and haven't had significant repairs, and it's 2023. Looking at making sure they have quality housing, quality programs, support, recreation, positive pro-social activities to do these are all necessary elements, and I put some of the blame on First Nation communities. This is what we have to get serious about if we're going to help our community thrive. We can often get punitive ourselves. There's quite a few nations around me that have this idea of justice and they want to follow the same mindset as the federal government, as the provincial government be tough on crime. We're going to remove these people from the nation. They're having banishment laws to get rid of them because we're just going to have the good people in our community. And looking inwards, it's like we can't say we understand intergenerational trauma and then remove the people from everybody they've ever met, every community member they've ever had dinner with or connected with, and hope that they're going to go thrive in another municipality separate from us. We have to embrace them and develop those resources ourselves, which is where economic development comes in.
Tim McAlpine:And for me, that's what I'm passionate about, because I think one of the big errors that First Nations communities have made over the years is we look to the federal government. We look to governments to come and fix our problems and give us the money we need. Now, certainly, there's a place for them. They help pay for things, but there's this error that we keep waiting for the funding to come in and when it doesn't, we don't have anything to do so we just go. Well, that's a big problem. We need to have our own source revenue so we can start developing programs and not worrying about whether or not it's coming in. And you look at Williams Lake, first Nation and some communities locally, muskwim. Once you start to have that, you can start to implement those programs and not worry About whether or not it's going to be funded next year by some other entity that's not invested the way you are.
Benjamin Perrin:Yeah, you know, sometimes I I'm learning so much just from hearing what you're sharing. I mean, this is incredible to have this conversation because I'm really interested in you know, as a like, as a person who's like a white settler, like what you know what, what can I do to help us get out of the way? Like that was really what herald johnson said. He's like you know, folks who are in the in the context of like criminal justice system, whether it's judges or lawyers or professors. He's like we're, when we're ready to take up our jurisdiction just get out of the way. Right? That's one of the main messages I have. The folks who are, who are not indigenous, is like Get out of the way and can I actually push back on that?
Tim McAlpine:I actually actually worry about that because so many probation officers crown counsel. They're so afraid. They have expertise, they know the research, like you know the research, and they're afraid to talk now because they're a white settler. And I think that this is concerning to me as well, because you have value, you have expertise. It's not about getting out of the way. It's about making sure that the exact things you know about and what you wrote about are put out to the general public, to put out To the politicians, as you're talking about these people. They're just not connecting with the research that you're already espousing and providing with people and I have probation officers saying I don't want to come on to reserve, I don't want to put my like, become a white savior or anything, and it's like no, you, you're the people we need support from, so we do this properly. So we have the understanding and we have the research to back up the decisions we're making.
Tim McAlpine:We can't afford to have communities going. You know what I want to do this. I want to lock them all up too. We need people going. This is what our best practices are. This is what we might recommend. We're not forcing it on you, but consider these ideas, and we need that in indigenous communities because I know capacity isn't always high. I'm one of the only people with a law degree from my community, so we need the experts to be willing to come in, provide the information and help us make a very informed decision. And when people are getting out of the way, we're missing some of that and I worry about that as well.
Benjamin Perrin:Yeah, I know, totally agree. I mean what I, what I understand get out of the way to mean is not abdication, right, because I completely agree with you. I think that that would be. That would be also an egregious error, right? So the the too big, the two biggest mistakes that White settlers have made and could continue to make is one imposing their way right, so, imposing their way. And number two is walking away. Completely. Right, so walking away completely.
Benjamin Perrin:And I, I want to be there to support where it's where it's where it's wanted, where it's helpful. That's what I do in this book. So, you know, I, I wrote chapters on indigenous justice. I did that by engaging with a number, a whole range of different indigenous Folks, everyone from people who are, you know, affected by the system, all of it to um, people who are um, who are elders, people who are lawyers, who have been, you know, involved in the criminal justice system, and and and learned from them. And then, you know, share back what I, what I'm here's, what I'm hearing, you know, and and trying to build support for For when there's a desire to take up that jurisdiction. I talk about a couple things. One is get out of the way in a sense of jurisdiction, lee. So when an indigenous community says like we're ready now to take on jurisdiction over, for example, what the criminal code calls summary conviction matters, something that's at the lower end of of severity, that's where we say okay, yeah, let's get the, get the criminal code out of the way and and our rcmp or whoever else is there, we're, we're going to transition to what. What are you going to do? What can we do to support you with this? And so there's a couple of really interesting Perspectives that I heard from folks in my research. These are indigenous lawyers, people working in around the system, and they made the point that you made as well. I think it's really interesting.
Benjamin Perrin:And john boros, professor now at u of t, he says this too. He's like, as an indigenous, leading indigenous law scholar, you know he says things like In indigenous laws, resurgence isn't about going back to what you know life. Life was like pre-contact. He's like we want to. We are going to learn from the best of every of what's out there. So, for example, I talk about the approach that norway takes to If we need to separate people from society a much smaller number of people, hopefully under a new approach, but there will be inevitably some people for, for, for public safety. It still needs to be separated for a time that that needs to be done in a in a way that's healing and restorative and not in a way that's kind of, you know, harm people and make them worse off. So I heard, for example, um, indigenous lawyers saying that's a great idea, like we should be looking what like norway is doing for when we do need to separate someone and and and then also looking at, for example, our traditions around on the land, healing and that kind of thing as well. So I find that really exciting. I want to contribute, I want to be a part of it.
Benjamin Perrin:I've been, you know, invited up a couple times to different Events and communities with, with indigenous leaders in this, in this arena. One I remember during the phase of the justice consultations was up in the ucon. There was a big conference that happened about four or five years ago and they asked me to come up because I'd put out a report card on the criminal justice system and I I shared and then I stuck Around for for about a day and listen to some of the other presentations and I learned a ton and it was great, and I would love to see Much, much more of that, because the fact is, we don't just have, and we shouldn't just have, one criminal law of canada. We have, in fact, many, many different approaches that are that are being taken, and, and as a person who's it, who's not indigenous I have learned a ton about New and better ways from indigenous Ways of practicing their laws that I think we should be doing in, even in a settler system, and so I'll give you one example of that.
Benjamin Perrin:And with respect to supporting survivors of crime, the, the idea that in in some indigenous laws you have, for example, up in the, up in the ucon, the car cross taggages. First nation I had a chance to visit there a few years ago at a friend who was, who was working in their, in their, uh, local government, and they're they're one of these nations that has decided they're going to actually write down some of their stories Not all of them, but some of their stories to to preserve them, to transmit them, and they created a law book, which for me, was really cool because I'm like, oh, I can read some of these stories and actually learn a bit more, and um, and you know one of the things I took away from. One of the stories was around how do you repair the harm done when there's when there's harm, and that if the person who did the harm is either unwilling or unable to restore the harm, that in in their system of laws, their clan bears the responsibility for making that redress to happen. Isn't that interesting? Because the way it works in our, in our settler system is if, if someone's a victim of crime and the accused has no financial means to provide support for that survivor and their needs, which could be lifelong needs. Right, if you, if you seriously injured someone, they could be unable to work or Are in a life looking for them solvers or their children or the family. Um, and our system generally says, well, you know too bad, so sad like it's, you know, this isn't about you. Actually, the system says this is a crime against the state, it's not even wrong against you, which is so incredibly wrong. Encounter intuitive and offensive um, instead of saying hey, um, you know this accused person. If they're not indigenous, they don't have a clan, but guess what, we're part of their community, we're going to step up. And it turns out that not all provinces and territories have criminal injuries compensation funds and those that do um range vastly. I mean some cover barely anything, like hardly anything, and it's it's an, it's an example.
Benjamin Perrin:When I heard that that approach taken in one of the stories in the in the Carcass-Tegish First Nation Statute books, that's what I took away from it. Right, and and I heard I heard David Millward, who's a who's a professor at University of Victoria and he's in the book and he speaks in my criminal law classes a guest speaker on Indigenous Laws, and we've worked together on a new criminal law book that that features Cree law alongside Canadian criminal law. He had something interesting to say to non-Indigenous people. He said don't worry about breaking Indigenous laws. What he meant by that is like if you're non-Indigenous, you learn and work with them and it's okay.
Benjamin Perrin:And to your point about you know parole officers or lawyers or judges saying like, oh, I'm not going to touch it because I'm worried about offense. I think it's good to approach with a high degree of like cultural humility, but also curiosity and like wanting to learn and and also being willing to be corrected. You know. So if someone calls me up after the podcast or emails and says, hey, I heard you talking about something our nation did, and I don't know where you heard that, but you're off and I'd say, oh, please help me, help me understand better, right, and so, and I not everyone who I've ever interacted with in my research, who was sharing about their, their approaches in their nation, they were so generous, like, with their, their time, and they also, um, they also were very clear that, like, it's important that we begin to engage in these conversations because what we're doing isn't working right, it's making things worse and we're going to continue on this path of of punitive criminal law in this country.
Benjamin Perrin:That is not serving anyone. It really isn't. And so the two options we have right now one is this tough on crime approach, which we've talked about. The second is this status quo that we keep tinkering with. As Harold said, you know more like continuing education programs, more representativeness in like police, prosecutors and judges, but we know those things are not moving the needle on these key metrics that demonstrate and show us the system is failing.
Tim McAlpine:I really feel like you did an excellent job of opening up this book with a discussion on trauma, because that's such a key issue for so many people. I don't have a client that I've worked with that doesn't have some sort of root point where you can see that their life started to go in a direction they didn't want it to go, and oftentimes it's with humility that they're in this, this courthouse, and with fear, but a willingness to admit that they've been on the wrong path. I rarely, if ever, have a client that's not willing to do some form of counseling, that's not willing to do some sort of program to address the underlying factors that brought them before the court. And so looking at trauma was so important in this conversation, and I thought you did a good job of highlighting Dr Cabell and Matthe's work. Would you mind talking a little bit about that, because I think when readers get your book, when they open it up, that's a very moving part of the book.
Benjamin Perrin:I'm really glad you brought that up, because it's the number one thing that's driving everything really here. We know that trauma, which includes things like early childhood trauma these are called adverse childhood experiences. So things like physical, sexual, emotional abuse or neglect, things like having a parent who's incarcerated or who has a mental health disorder, substance use disorder, parental separation, divorce, poverty, racism there's the research has got a growing list actually of childhood trauma risk factors, and for every one of those that someone experiences, it dramatically changes the trajectory of their life course in terms of their life. It shortens their life. It makes them more likely to develop all kinds of health diseases and disorders. It makes them more likely to develop a substance use disorder, because substances are designed to, you know, medicate pain in a sense, in our lives. That's why people turn to them as a coping mechanism initially, and it turns out that adverse childhood experiences, childhood trauma, plays a major role in us understanding how we end up with massive harm and crime in our society, as it's happening today as well. So someone who experiences childhood trauma is 50% 50% more likely to harm someone later in life, but at the same time, and re-offend as well. At the same time, though, you're not just more likely to harm someone later in life if you were harmed, but you're also more likely to also be harmed again yourself. So you're more likely to become a victim and an offender later in life. And when you look at something like sexual offenses, someone who experiences childhood trauma is eight times more likely to similarly be a victim of sexual violence or exploitation as an adult. So if we want to address harm in our society and say one of the goals is that we want to reduce the level of harm in our society and I can say that there's something that we can do that will lower the risk of someone harming others by 50% we have to start there.
Benjamin Perrin:The other reason trauma is so crucial is we can't understand any interaction in the criminal justice system without a deep and abiding knowledge of trauma and how it affects people in ways that they don't even understand. And most people that I spoke to some of them, yeah, most people, that's fair. Most people I spoke to did not understand or show a reflection of understanding of how the trauma they experienced affect them, either their trauma as a child or while incarcerated, or as the child incarcerated. So, for example, I remember one of the folks I spoke with. He talked about his story, his life, his time incarcerated and at some point he said that his one of his parents had died when he was very young and just he had an off-end comment about oh, that probably has affected me in some way. There was no connection there. The death of a parent when you're a child is one of the most traumatic things you could experience. That absolutely played a massive role in his entire life course after that, but he was scarcely even aware of that.
Benjamin Perrin:And so, likewise, when we see people in the courtroom who are testifying whether they're the accused, they're a complainant, whether they're a third party witness and they have unresolved trauma and they, for example, remember things differently when they testified and when they gave their statement. Well, the law says that's a prior and consistent statement. It makes their evidence less credible. They're less reliable. Likewise, they're demeanor If they're testifying about some violent act against them that they allegedly suffered and they have a flat disposition, without showing emotion. Nine times out of 10, or more than that, 99 times out of 100, a jury is going to look at that and likely say that didn't really happen. They had no emotion. If that happened to me, like the average person. If that happened to me, I would have been crying, I would have shown some emotion.
Benjamin Perrin:Well, it turns out one of the ways that trauma impacts people is something called dissociation. They get numb or flat when they're recounting that event or when they're triggered, and so that's actually an expected trauma response. But the way that our law tells judges and juries to interpret things like demeanor is to use your common sense. That's literally the law of evidence. It says to use your common sense, use your experience, your own lived experience. Well, when we have juries that are not representative and certainly aren't aware of the impacts of trauma, their lived experience is so different from the lived experience of the people they're being asked to assess and determine the facts in a case, you're going to end up with results that are horribly, horribly awesome.
Benjamin Perrin:So we actually, in addition to this book, we actually have an article coming out this fall in the Canadian Bar Review that I co-wrote with a student who initially wrote us a paper for a directed research at our law school and then we brought on. It was so good, I said you got to publish this. He says, well, I'm not doing it alone. So I said, okay, well, let's build it up together and we brought on two leading trauma experts, so it's not just a couple of law students and law professors writing it and that's going to come in a few months and it specifically focuses on how our evidence law is set up in a way that it completely misunderstands trauma, that there's a substantial risk that that results in miscarriages of justice. Actually, there's a major risk of that happening.
Tim McAlpine:The aspect of trauma I think is so important. When I think about my own experiences and how you cover intergenerational trauma, I found it. I think sometimes we have wounds and you sort of help describe trauma as a wound that heals. But I find when you have an insight, like you did in your book, it can help you deepen your understanding and take a lesson away from the wound. And my grandmother attended St Mary's Indian Residential School and faced trauma that she never spoke of, she didn't explain, she used alcohol to cope. And then she has multiple children, one of which was my mother, and she's born with fetal alcohol syndrome disorder as a consequence of her mother drinking alcohol to cope. And then I'm born to a single mother with a disability. And so you can see how this is a trajectory not going in the right direction. But I think one of the things you pointed out is that I'm forgetting the exact terminology you used, but this idea that we can learn from it, that we can grow from it and that it doesn't have to stay this way.
Tim McAlpine:We don't have to stay on it, we don't have to transfer it to other people. If we can look back at our family and what they did that didn't work, we can grow from the experience and move our family, our bloodline, our connections, our community in a new direction. That there is hope through all of this, that sharing this trauma can move us in a new direction. And I think, when we're looking at the criminal justice system and its failings, when we look at Canada with its failings, the only thing that we need to do with all of this is bring that sense of hope that things could be better for the next generation, that we could be the spark that ignites the change that's necessary for us to come together. And I found it really important throughout the book, because it's a heavy book on many of the challenges we're facing in our society today. But I thought you did a miraculous job of pulling that out each time you covered a difficult topic.
Benjamin Perrin:Well, thank you. I mean this is what I heard, right, and I have hope too. I also have hope and thank you for sharing your story. I mean it is an incredible journey and you're talking about your grandmother and your mother, and I don't even know all about the rest of your family, but people who are able to kind of look back at this and say you know what? We can have some understanding and some grace to see People are doing the best they could at the time with what they had and it doesn't have to continue to transmit down.
Benjamin Perrin:Like you said, the word was post-traumatic growth that was the term I heard and it's this moment where you realize that when you get the support and you get the healing, things can change in a radically better way, not in a little way, in like a radically better way. And I've seen that in my own life as well, with people who I interviewed in this book and people who I know, who've been through all kinds of different issues, and that does give me hope. There's many people who I interviewed actually, we've talked a lot about the 36 or so people who I interviewed with lived experience as survivors or as people are incarcerated, but the other 35 or so people that I interviewed were people who were professionals in and around the system. It turns out a lot of those people also have histories themselves of trauma and intergenerational trauma, and if I had spoken to them 5 or 10 years earlier 15 years earlier they would have been on the people with lived experience side. But because of the healing growth They've gone through, they're now like, I'm thinking, someone particular, multiple people who went into counseling you talked about counseling. These are, in particular, an indigenous woman who I interviewed and she's the person on the podcast who leads episode one. If anyone wants to check the podcast out, everyone gets a pseudonym, so her pseudonym is Jessica. So that's the first episode and just an absolutely harrowing story of decades of abuse. But now she's counselor, she is helping others and the kind of healing and transformation that she went through and the hope that she has and it is encouraging, it's inspiring, and so if, if, if, people can change and get that support, so can communities and so can our whole country, and we have to be willing to not continue down the path of fear and and instead be open to what, what could work, what could make us safer today and tomorrow.
Benjamin Perrin:Right, we need to look after people who are causing harm today. Sure, there are better ways to do that and I'm very interested in preventing the crime of tomorrow. We can actually do that because we can see. We can see with the statistics, we can see with these programs and policies what we can do today to prevent the sexual assaults of tomorrow, the murders of tomorrow, the robberies of tomorrow. Like Making those decisions now, it turns out they're also dramatically cost-effective.
Benjamin Perrin:I mean the programming that we we look at in here, things like the Nurse family partnerships. A good example this is a program that pairs up a public health nurse with young families while while the mother's still pregnant, and works with them and comes into their home and supports them with whether it's how do you Care for the child, what are appropriate ways to do discipline, education on, like you know, taking substances during pregnancy, help and get you know, employment, accessing resources. Like you said, it's not in a court, right, it's in your home. And then they track those youth. So those kids who were, you know, followed up to around toddler hood and they followed them up until they were 15 and they've done randomized, controlled trials of families in the same kind of communities somewhere in this nurse family partnership program Up until age two or so.
Benjamin Perrin:Others weren't, and what they found was a completely different picture Up to 80% less childhood abuse and treatment, maltreatment, you know. 50% or so less Arrests. 80% or so less convictions. So people who were treated with care and love and respect and have that that healthy attachment relationship with their parents. When we see them later in life as teenagers, they end up better, and we all end up better, and it's it's their life that's been saved from a life of harm and misery Because they would have, they would have been higher risk of being victimized.
Benjamin Perrin:Look at those rates. So we've, we've helped them and We've helped the people that they were at risk of harming. So this is where we can win. We can, we can do this, and it's again a fraction of the price. The Studies that have been done on the on the financial side of this and their their Conservative figures, is that that program generates a net Gain of $18,000 per family. So it actually makes money. Like you're, you're reducing trauma and you're making money. Now you have to be willing to look at it over the longer term, but if we're not, then we can just keep incarcerating people and Paying from our police with our high property taxes, all things that we know actually don't, in the end, help us.
Tim McAlpine:The thing that I want to end with is this idea of systemic racism. It makes me. I went into my criminology degree and learned about the statistics the ones you described of the over representation of indigenous people and heard this term systemic racism and I Went into the criminal justice system expecting to find Racist people and I continued not to find people who wanted worse for indigenous people, people like yourself Going to judges conferences, meeting with crown council, meeting with probation officers. Everybody wants to see these statistics come down, and so I felt very uncomfortable with the idea of saying that term Because I don't know exactly what it means and different people have different definitions of it. But one of the things I loved that you covered that made me understand the issue in a better way, in my opinion Is the adverse childhood experiences survey, the ACEs test, because it gives us Tangible ways to address this and you see, with indigenous communities you see worse ACEs. So you you kind of go through this questionnaire and figure out what trauma they faced and then you go through and the more trauma, the more statistics that are gonna have an interaction with the criminal justice system, and that seems addressable to me.
Tim McAlpine:But when we say terms like systemic racism. My challenge is it doesn't point the finger in any direction where I feel like I could be a part of the Solution. And when we start talking about, well, we need to make sure these issues don't arise for them and then they're more likely to succeed, it's like that's where I want to go, that's the direction, because there's again this hesitation of like it's everybody in court that's guilty. Well, we know that over the years, so many failings brought them into the system, and when I'm working with clients and then when I'm working with Community members, that ACEs test is exactly what I want to be able to go. Are we moving in this direction that addresses these issues? Are we looking at these as the hallmarks of success for our community? And I found that so important and you, you did a good job of diving into that. Would you mind just explaining that for people?
Benjamin Perrin:Yeah, sure. So once we have this understanding that one of the main drivers of negative outcomes and we're focusing on the criminal justice outcomes, but again it's a good reminder, we're also talking about Rates of like finishing high school and university are driven by childhood trauma, so is your health care expenditures. So all of the types of negative, bad things that can happen to you in life, many of them, if not most or all of them, are driven by childhood trauma. Those increase your risks, and so there are things that can be done to, at the front end, begin to address that. So one organization I came across in the UK is called the Wave Trust, and they started an international campaign to try to reduce Childhood abuse and childhood trauma In in a measurable way over a 10 or 20 year period, and so they looked at well over, I think, a hundred different policies and programs around the world, and they were interested in seeing what worked, and what they found was the earlier the intervention the better, the earlier the intervention the better, and so that means it actually begins while While young families are, before the child is even entered the world, and so that starts with supporting the parents and the family members, and it's really encouraging to see things like that. Nurse family partnership is one of the examples of the programs, but there's many other ones they do as well.
Benjamin Perrin:So another one is called the roots of empathy program and we've been running this in VC for some time now but it's not widespread. I mean, we heard about it, we heard about it, I heard about it. I have three kids in the Vancouver school board and we heard about it running in the school board but none of our kids actually watch, participate. So like it's there but it's not widespread. What roots of empathy is is Someone in the community who agrees to volunteer, participate in the program, who has recently had a newborn. So we're not talking to three or four year old, but like a newborn comes into a classroom and it's, you know, maybe it's grade one or two or three, but it's early on, and so they're coming in the classroom and they come in with their, with the newborn, and they come in, I think it's every month or so for like the entire year and Through the course of that year, of course, babies grow up quick, right? So the baby at the point you know, come in, as you know, all go, go, guy, guy, and by the end is At least crawling and maybe even walking and even talking a little bit, depending on the kid.
Benjamin Perrin:And what they do is they study this program and what they found is that the children who participate in the program they begin to, they begin to change as they sort of track them and and and follow their progress in this. Because what they see is they get to see this healthy, loving attachment for this baby and its mother and unfortunately, some of the kids in that school never experienced that in their homes, right, because of many reasons could have been many things that caused that. And they also get to develop some empathy and, of course, they integrate the baby into all kinds of stuff, like in the English class They'll do like you know stories about the baby, and when they're in math class They'll do like met, they'll measure how long the baby is or weigh the baby and things like this. And it's called roots of empathy because it's designed to Help to build that empathy and it does it through an infant which is just, you know, like melts everyone's heart anyway, right, and so, yeah, but they found things, for example, like bullying in schools reduced in schools that had this, this program, right, and so it's a program which is another example of how you can address childhood trauma. So you know we're so busy talking about, you know, jail and how many people should be in this classification of prison.
Benjamin Perrin:All that we're we've completely lost track of, like the most basics, which is that starts with how we raise our kids and how we support families and communities to have healthier kids. Things like school lunch programs is another example of this. You know kids can't learn when they're hungry and we know that. That people who come from you know socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds, if their kids are going to school because they they can't afford to give them food Right, they just cannot afford to give them food. Those are another example of some programs where they have higher educational attainments. You know support for for children who have disabilities and learning disabilities or cognitive disabilities. We can make investments on the front end and and literally like not only to save money, like, yeah, that matters, but we can also just Help people. Like we can have a better society. We can have a society that's safer for everyone and I'm not in some kind of polyanna world where I don't understand about.
Benjamin Perrin:You know murder and rape. Like we, I address that in the book. I'm like, yeah, when people are a risk to society they have to be separated, but they're going to get out Our system. 99% of people are going to get out.
Benjamin Perrin:So what kind of a neighbor do you want to have? Do you want to have someone who's been in prison In a harsh condition and not given any support and addressing their root issues, who comes out? You know they've basically been sharpening their shank and jail the whole time and making more connections with criminal underworld. Do you want them moving in next door with an even bigger chip on their shoulder than the way that they went in? Or do you want to have someone like, for example, who came out of a place like Halden prison in Norway, who, when they went in there, they're treated with some dignity. They weren't locked in a cage all day. They didn't have guards who were intimidating to them, but contact officers.
Benjamin Perrin:This job it was to mentor and support them. They got the substance treatment they needed. They got the counseling and support. They got a vocational training in an area where there's jobs needed. In Canada right now there's over 1 million unmet jobs. We've got massive shortfalls in areas of low and moderate skill labor the kinds of things that like a 12 to 24 month teaching or apprenticeship you can do and earn a good income at. But our system doesn't do that. It sends people out unemployable with these criminal records. They're more traumatized than we started, and then this cycle repeats. And then what do we do? They're a repeat offender. Let's lock out for longer. This is insanity. It's absolutely crazy.
Benjamin Perrin:And so not everyone's buying into tough on crime. And that's another place for hope too. The city of Toronto had a Merrill election recently. They had multiple candidates, including a former chief of police, running saying we need more police. One of them said we need 500 new uniformed police officers. They lost.
Benjamin Perrin:Same thing happened in Chicago. They had a Merrill race in Chicago Tough on crime versus someone who's like. Let's address the root cause More police doesn't get a fixed homelessness and poverty and substance use and mental health disorders. Let's look at interventions that actually work and let's scale those up. And yeah, the tough on crime candidate lost. So you know it's not a foregone conclusion that tough on crime always wins. I think, as more people hopefully become aware of the fact that tough on crime doesn't work and we need to look at better approaches. That's the conversation I hope this book indictment starts. I hope we have a national conversation about maybe it's not the ideas I'm proposing, but other ideas. But what could we do other than a really flawed status quo, other than more tough on crime? What could we do instead that would help make us all safer? That's the kind of conversation I think we need to have.
Tim McAlpine:I think it's so admirable because I often try and remind people of this idea that what if Indigenous people weren't overrepresented in the criminal justice system, if we say that systemic racism was gone, what if we addressed these issues, addressed the aces, got people supported? We need to make sure that these resources are available to anybody who needs them. I often think, in my own role as a native court worker, that there should be a court worker helping other people who aren't Indigenous. I've had the pleasure of helping people who are not Indigenous through the court system and explaining how it works. But there is no resource when you're going through the system. You're on your own when you're going through this process, and that can be challenging. We need to make sure the 10% of people who are struggling the most always have these resources, and I found that you had just such a strong vision.
Tim McAlpine:You were able to look at the system as it was but develop a new vision as to how things could be, and I think that that's sometimes what we forget when we get into oh, maybe we could make this change here, maybe we could do this thing over here, and we kind of forget that things could be so much better than they already are, that we could have large-scale change that improves things. We kind of get well, this law has been here for 50 years, so it's just going to keep going and it's the same with precedence. We kind of look at it and it's so admirable for someone within the system to have seen it, to have understood it, to have had your own ideas on it, to grow and develop and bring this to light. So I really appreciate you for being willing to share your time with us today. Would you mind telling people how they can find your book and your podcast?
Benjamin Perrin:Yeah, thank you. So the book is called Inditement the Criminal Justice System on Trial. You get it on Amazon, indigo, your local bookstore, and it comes at October 3rd, so check it out. The podcast also is available now. It's actually live and if you go to indictmentsimplecastcom you can listen online or go on to Apple Podcasts. All the major platforms have it. Same name Inditement the Criminal Justice System on Trial. We also have events for doing right across the country. I think 16 or 17 events this fall, so October, november 2023, and those are all. You can get a link through my website, which is just my name, benjaminparanca, and yeah, I'd love to hopefully see one of those events. They're in, I think, six or seven cities Plus we have a big one on Zoom, if we were not in your hometown, yeah, please come and check it out and, yeah, join this conversation.
Tim McAlpine:Ben, I really appreciate your work on this book. I was blown away. As somebody who works within the system, I've heard some people's ideas and I go, oh, they don't actually know what the real world is. You did such an excellent job. I was so excited to speak with you. I think you've really done great work here, and I really hope this sparks national conversation. I hope it gets people thinking about how they think about justice. I hope they think about their neighbors or the people struggling on the street when they read your book. I think it's such a valuable tool for us to grow our social fabric and strengthen ourselves, and so I thank you again.
Benjamin Perrin:Well, that means so much. I mean, thank you. We couldn't ask for more than to hear you say how helpful you think the book is, and it's just the impact, and I really appreciate the chance to share it with you and all your listeners today. So, yeah, it's an honor, thank you.
Tim McAlpine:I highly recommend people go pick it up October 3rd, available everywhere. Thank you again.
Benjamin Perrin:Take care.
Aaron Pete:Did you take the Laws of Physics as part of your degree?
Tim McAlpine:No, that was, that was not for your course.
Aaron Pete:I missed that one. Murphy's Law, was that one of them?
Tim McAlpine:No.
Aaron Pete:I don't know how deep this little path of conversation. Law of Attraction, law of Attraction oh yeah, that was a great course. Oh, you went to law school? Well, no, I went to the school of magnets, that was. You know, they were the attraction of magnets. I'm doing my best to try to get a Tim Talk or Tim Bit in the end, tim Bit in the end, tim Bit we have to call it that.
Tim McAlpine:Why are we not calling it a Tim?
Aaron Pete:Bit? No, we're not.
Tim McAlpine:That's what it's called now. For sure it's Canadian, it's perfect.
Aaron Pete:Yes, yeah, we'll be trademarked and we'll have a cease and desist letter from the powers of Tim Horton's. I don't think really are that much Canadian owned anymore, so let's take it Burger King owned by the same French president as Burger King. Yeah.
Tim McAlpine:I own stock in them, so I'm a shareholder.
Aaron Pete:Sounds like a whopper.