I made progress on my legal memo today—reaching page seven of the fifteen single-spaced pages I need to complete by the end of my internship. My topic: The overincarceration of Indigenous youth in Canada. Why is it happening? And what policy recommendations could ameliorate this situation?
It’s Friday. 4pm. I am content with the work I completed this week. I am about to log off when I check my inbox one last time. I have one email waiting for me: An urgent Gladue writer is needed, sentencing date in about one week’s time. Youth case.
The irony is palpable. It is one thing to research a legal memorandum, to mull over a phenomenon, and to engage with it academically. It is another thing entirely to work with an actual case involving a youth offender.
Hesitant about whether I could complete this report on such short notice—most Gladue files come with weeks, if not months, of notice—I reach out to my supervisor for advice. He informs me that the other full-time writers are at capacity, and they really need someone. That was all I needed to hear. I emailed back and accepted the file.
Unfortunately, this case ended up being particularly difficult. Forty minutes into interviewing my client—and struggling to have in-depth or clear responses to my questions—I eventually learn that I am, in fact, her second Gladue writer. She had already gone through the whole process of relaying her trauma to a stranger, and her report was nearly complete. However, each Gladue report requires two secondary interviews with personal connections, and due to a conflict of interest, the other writer could not interview the family. This explained why I received the last-minute urgent email to take on the case, and it helped me understand why my client was reluctant to open up in our interview.
As she disclosed this to me, I listened to her sorrowful frustration. I empathized with her deeply and responded truthfully that I would also hate to divulge the most traumatic moments of my life to someone I just met—and then have to do it all over again.
This reveals the most challenging part of the internship, something that I could not quite shake: How invasive the entire process feels. In my previous blog, I posited that human rights is a people-centered field which requires attunement and the discipline to show up as a human rather than a lawyer when the work calls for it. I still believe this. However, this experience made me realize that the more attuned I became to my client’s experience, the more aware I was of how distressing the process itself could be.
At the same time, I understand why the Gladue process exists. A comprehensive report detailing an Indigenous person’s circumstances and the systemic factors that implicated their life could offer the court perspective. Most importantly, and my favorite part of the process, the report provides the opportunity to recommend alternatives to incarceration. I could advocate rehabilitation for an individual struggling with addiction, or a healing program that reconnects a client to their culture.
However, I do not want to be a proponent of the “the process sucks, but it’s good for you” mentality. Perhaps the Gladue process is a step in the right direction, but further progress and reform are required. Before my internship, I had discussed becoming a Gladue writer with a professor of mine. He told me that the process can help, but that it is, at most, a Band-Aid solution.
I have come to understand what he meant.
Erasing the effects of centuries of racist and genocidal policies is a herculean process that will require many generations to overcome.1 So while the Gladue report addresses the consequences of a much larger problem, it does not undo the conditions that brought that person before the court in the first place.
And if the process requires someone to repeatedly recount their trauma to strangers, we have to ask whether our attempts to account for that trauma can also compound it.
Similar to my co-interns’ sentiment (available here), I do not have an answer and will not purport to hold one. I am still learning what it means to work within a system that I am also questioning. What I can say is that I have the utmost respect for my clients, for their bravery and resilience, and for trusting me with their stories.
As a Gladue writer, I hold the responsibility of telling those stories to a court, a responsibility that I do not take lightly. And perhaps that is what I will carry with me most from this internship: Not an answer, but a genuine understanding of the individuals behind the issues I spent my summer researching.
- René Allain, “Bill C-92: A Catalyst for Change in the YCJA” (2023) 35:2 Can J Fam L 97 at 97.
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