Collecting and Presenting Gladue Principles for Sentencing Hearing

In this module you will learn and understand:

Key considerations when collecting information.

Approaches for collecting relevant Gladue Principles for purposes of reporting that information regarding an Offender to a sentencing Court.

How to organize your information in a fashion which meets the needs of the Court.

Remember, submissions regarding Gladue Principals are ‘only’ for the purpose of sentencing Aboriginal Offenders who:

(a) have been found guilty of a Criminal Code Offence or

(b) are about to plead guilty to an offence.

The purpose of the Gladue Principles Submissions is to advise the Court as to:

• who the Aboriginal Offender before the Court is "as a person,” and
• any relevant individualized information with regard to how the person now before the court has been affected by intergenerational and systemic effects of colonialism, displacement, residential schools, poverty, unemployment and substance misuse and such.
• any other systemic circumstances and/or barriers (Ipeelee) which contributed to this Offender now being in conflict with the law and before the court, and
• what realistic sentencing approaches properly consider the goals of Gladue/Ipeelee and section 718(2)(e), of note:
• proportionality as to the gravity of the offence and
• the harm to the victim(s)/community and
• the degree of moral blameworthiness accepted by the offender.

KEY NOTE:  As noted in Ipeelee, the systemic discrimination and background in the Gladue Report are not about saying WHY the offender did the crime but about what is a fit restorative justice sentence.