Community groups push restorative justice for racialized Winnipeggers

Dave Baxter · CBC News

· Posted: Jun 28, 2025 7:21 PM EDT | Last Updated: 1 hr ago

Community groups successful Winnipeg are pushing for a much restorative attack to policing and prosecuting racialized communities successful Winnipeg. 

An lawsuit connected Saturday organized by the Social Planning Council of Winnipeg (SPCW) and different assemblage groups saw the merchandise of a caller study and manual that looks to item "the lived realities of safety, trust, and assemblage belonging for racialized and newcomer younker successful Winnipeg."

The "Community Solutions for Safety for Racialized Newcomer Youth successful Winnipeg," report, published this period by the Immigration Partnership Winnipeg, collected first-hand accounts from 76 younker betwixt the ages of 13 and 35. 

The younker came from divers immigrant, ethnocultural, educational, gendered and socioeconomic backgrounds, each having unsocial lived experiences and views connected information successful the city, including the section constabulary unit and justness system.

Report authors Darrien Morton and Matt Fast recovered that immoderate younker wanted much constabulary extortion portion others wanted officers to enactment distant – and immoderate didn't privation to speech astir constabulary astatine all. Meanwhile, assemblage leaders described their exhaustion and vexation with "performative constabulary engagement." 

"What communities asked for, much than anything, was accountability. A harmless presence. Someone to crook to. And what's adjacent better, capable resources," Morton and Fast wrote.

The study shows that racialized, newcomer and Indigenous communities successful Winnipeg, and those who were calved present to migrant parents often find systems similar policing and the courts strategy to beryllium "distant, ineffective, oregon adjacent unsafe," SPCW said. 

Writers Morton and Fast said determination was a widely-held content among the younker that "police person much unchecked powerfulness than astir radical tin imagine," which makes the imaginable of changing that strategy look "distant oregon unrealistic." 

Those issues are starring to the continued overrepresentation of racialized persons and groups successful the transgression justness system, including migrant and Indigenous communities, according to the report. 

The manual was released aft a three-year, three-phase task that began successful 2021, launched aft respective fatal constabulary encounters successful Manitoba. 

A 2020 investigation by CBC News recovered that astir fatal constabulary encounters progressive Indigenous people. 

The goals of the task did alteration implicit time, arsenic SPCW says primitively they were hoping to amended spot betwixt Indigenous, Black, and racialized newcomer communities and the Winnipeg Police Service done a 'Community Safety and Inclusion Office' oregon 'Hub.'

Due to "deep divisions and concerns astir policing," however, SPCW says the task pivoted to absorption connected knowing however racialized newcomers and specifically newcomer younker comprehend safety, trust, and justness betterment successful Winnipeg. 

The survey besides looks astatine questions astir if much constabulary connected the streets would amended information oregon origin much harm, and if spot tin adjacent beryllium built betwixt communities and the police, oregon if the narration is permanently "broken."

The papers besides highlights "systemic shortcomings" successful addressing newcomer information and justice, including overlooking newcomer diversity, fragmented care, superficial accountability, uneven information practices, and fractured solidarity.

"There's a request for standardized evaluation, culturally adapted ineligible literacy, 24/7 civilian-led situation response, and peer-led younker programs," the study states. 

The groups said the study comes with what they are calling respective "suggestions oregon more-than-recommendations," alternatively than accepted recommendations to debar placing an "unfair load connected participants to lick systemic problems."

Restorative justness is defined by the Government of Canada arsenic "an attack to justness that seeks to repair harm by providing an accidental for those harmed and those who instrumentality work for the harm to pass astir and code their needs successful the aftermath of a crime."

SPCW said they judge a much restorative attack would pb to little racialized radical being charged with crimes and incarcerated successful Winnipeg, and said they volition proceed to beforehand strategies and recommendations to beforehand the information and well-being of racialized newcomers and newcomer younker successful our city.

"Some of the astir meaningful forms of harm simplification travel not from surveillance oregon involution … but from however nationalist abstraction is cared for. Fixing deep-seated problems shouldn't person to halt america from making things a small spot amended now," Morton and Fast wrote.