Community groups question whether anti-racism legislation can change systemic racism in B C vancouversun.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from vancouversun.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Houses of hate: How Canada s prison system is broken
Justin Ling: Dangerous, racist and falling apart. By nearly every metric, the nation s penal system is not just failing, it s making things worse. Medium security range at Stony Mountain Institution in Stony Mountain, Manitoba (Correctional Services Canada/Flickr)
Michael Ignatieff was staring right at the Prime Minister. “I worked in a prison when I was a younger graduate student,” he said. “I worked with lifers. I’m utterly unsentimental about criminals, but one thing I know about prison: It’s that prison makes almost everybody worse who’s in there.”
It was a rare personable moment for Ignatieff, who normally has the air of a university lecturer, and it came in the middle of the televised leaders’ debate. “You’re going to end up with more crime problems, not less,” Ignatieff said, imploring Stephen Harper to drop his $13 billion plan for stiffer prison sentences and megaprisons. His hands held aloft, i
Article content
A coalition of civil rights groups panned a newly released audit of street checks overseen by the Vancouver Police Board, arguing that street checks were illegal and that they âdisproportionately harm Indigenous and Black communities.â
The audit of every street check recorded by VPD officers in 2020 showed that the new rules cut street checks by more than 90 per cent â from 4,544 in 2019 to 87 people in 2020 â but that compared to the 10-year average from 2008-2017, overrepresentation of Indigenous people increased by nearly five percentage points.
We apologize, but this video has failed to load.
Try refreshing your browser, or Civil rights groups give VPD âStreet Checkâ audit an F Back to video
Vancouver to update noise bylaw in response to anti-gay preachers in West End
Vancouver city councillors will discuss an upgraded version of its municipal noise bylaws in response to a man preaching anti-gay messages with a microphone and amplifier in the West End last summer.
Social Sharing I don t think the issue is with the amplification the issue is promotion of hate, says advocate
Posted: Feb 20, 2021 6:00 AM PT | Last Updated: February 20
Street preacher David Lynn, founder of Christ’s Forgiveness Ministries, delivered a speech in Vancouver s downtown West End surrounded by Vancouver police officers as a crowd of pro-LGBTQ demonstrators surrounded him on August 31, 2020.(Enzo Zanatta/CBC news)
New data shows a disproportionate number of Indigenous and Black people are still targeted.
Jen St. Denis is The Tyee’s Downtown Eastside reporter. Find her on Twitter @JenStDen. This reporting beat is made possible by the Local Journalism Initiative. SHARES Vancouver police report they dramatically reduced the number of street checks in 2020.
Photo by Jen St. Denis.
Vancouver police say they cut the number of street checks by 94 per cent in 2020, but their data still shows a disproportionate number of Indigenous and Black people being stopped by police without evidence of a crime.
Announcements, Events & more from Tyee and select partners