Aboriginal Imprisonment: a story behind the numbers

In 1999, the Supreme Court ruled in R v Gladue that courts must courts “take judicial notice of the broad systemic and background factors affecting aboriginal people, and of the priority given in aboriginal cultures to a restorative approach to sentencing.” Thirteen years later, the Court made it clear in R v Ipeelee that the principles outlined in Gladue are not going away. Yet it is still unclear whether the Canadian justice system has gotten the message. In this episode of the MLJ Podcast, we discuss the current state of aboriginal sentencing in Canada with Jonathan Rudin, Program Director of Aboriginal Legal Services Toronto and founder of the first Gladue court in Canada.