How a Gladue report changed Randy Kakegamick’s life

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Born to residential school survivors, Randy Kakegamick’s story of addiction, treatment, relapse, and revolving door in and out of prison goes back generations.

His parents’ struggles have shaped his own life, from his stay in boarding schools and his struggle with addiction, to the neglectful way they raised him, says Kakegamick, an Ojibwe-Cree man from Ottawa.

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“If you’re quiet, you’re fine,” Kakegamick remembers her mother telling her about the past that has haunted her most of her life. “For a long time she always said, ‘We don’t need to talk about that.’”

It’s a silence that haunted him too, until he found a way to change his life in recent years. A turning point for Kakegamick, an Algonquin College student completing a certificate in screenwriting, was when he found the strength to tell his story in a Gladue report.

The Gladue reports were adopted after a landmark Supreme Court of Canada ruling issued 25 years ago. The April 23, 1999 decision found that the over-incarceration of Indigenous offenders amounted to a large-scale crisis in Canada’s justice system and upheld a federal provision instructing judges to pay “particular attention to the circumstances” of indigenous criminals and find alternatives to prison. and jail “when it is reasonable to do so.”

The reports, which are primarily completed by publicly funded Gladue writers, examine factors such as the effects of colonialism, residential schools, racism, mental health issues, addiction, foster care, neglect, levels lower educational levels, housing shortages and lack of opportunities.

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The reports are given to judges to consider when sentencing offenders who have already been convicted.

“Sometimes it can be a challenge for me to move forward in life, but I am. I’m doing it and it was actually with the help of the Gladue report,” says Kakegamick, 46. “A lot of people don’t take advantage of these opportunities and a lot of people don’t take advantage of them because it’s a difficult process. “It was really a challenge for me to sit down with a writer and tell them my life story, to tell them this is what happened to me, to say that I was abused, that I was abandoned as a child, that my parents were terrible.”

While the reports can produce positive results, they still have a long way to go to be widely accessible, affordable, and accepted by courts and governments, says Jane Dickson, a law professor at Carleton University and Gladue writer.

Access is unequal across Canada, the reporting system is underfunded and access can be a problem if Indigenous heritage cannot be determined, he says. Additionally, reports can take months to complete, and offenders often spend the additional time between conviction and sentencing in overcrowded detention facilities, such as the Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre.

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“I would like to see the federal government make a strong commitment to setting national standards for Gladue,” Dickson says. “I would like to see a significant financial commitment to support Indigenous people’s access to Gladue reports.”

Despite decades of courts considering what are known as Gladue factors, Indigenous incarceration rates have steadily increased. Ivan Zinger, the federal prisons ombudsman, reported late last year that the proportion of Indigenous offenders in federal custody has reached an all-time high of more than 30 percent of inmates, despite making up five percent of the total population. He described the increase as “nothing less than a national travesty and remains one of Canada’s most pressing human rights challenges.”

Ottawa criminal lawyer Ewan Lyttle, who defends Indigenous clients pro bono, noted there is a sort of filter in Ontario where Gladue reports are not commissioned unless the Crown seeks a sentence of 120 days or more.

Gladue analysts have widely recognized that Gladue’s codified reports and principles (which judges must consider regardless of whether a report has been issued) are not a solution on their own. A big impediment to reducing incarceration rates is a lack of community resources, Lyttle says.

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“I think Gladue is being applied more and more in the courts as the years go by… but the rates are not going down and from my perspective the principles are correct and the way they are used in the courts and by judges are correct. but there are no resources,” says Lyttle. “There are no social programs for Indigenous people to deal with trauma, substance abuse or housing, especially those that are Indigenous-specific and run by Indigenous people.”

He added that his clients with “crippling addictions that are tied to intergenerational trauma have nowhere to go,” as there is no Indigenous-specific treatment center in Ottawa.

Kakegamick believes the hard work he put into a Gladue report, along with other factors such as volunteer work and alcohol addiction counseling and treatment, contributed to a judge giving him a suspended sentence.

“For me, a lot of things were falling into place,” says Kakegamick, who counts himself among the lucky ones, because he says many Indigenous criminals don’t know about Gladue’s reports. He said he found out about them because a court worker from the Odawa Native Friendship Center showed up at the pretrial detention center looking for indigenous people to inform them about his options. He says he then pressured his attorney to request a report.

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From there, he began the painful process of telling his story that led him to break the law, with crimes ranging from robbery to intimate partner violence.

The son of divorced parents and a mother who suffered from alcohol and drug abuse, Kakegamick found himself wandering the streets of Centertown alone as a child. He says neglect (and witnessing his parents’ alcohol abuse) led to him being labeled a troublemaker at the age of seven. From elementary school onwards, he was involved in multiple altercations with other children. He began experimenting with drugs and alcohol as a teenager, developing an addiction that he struggled with into his thirties.

“I remember as a kid wondering ‘what’s in the brown bottle?’ Why do they act so strange afterwards? I want to try it,’” Kakegamick recalls.

He was first sent to a youth detention center in Hull when he was 16. He spent nearly two decades in and out of prison. Every time he was released, he violated his parole, he says. Prison sentences became longer as he aged. Becoming a good father to his son, who is now 15 years old, was a great motivation to change his life. The last time Kakegamick was before a judge was about seven years ago. He has returned to court periodically, but to volunteer at the opening sessions of the blurring ceremonies at the Indigenous Peoples’ Court, which opened in 2017 and is based at the Ottawa courthouse on Elgin Street.

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The courts, also known as Gladue courts, are another result of the Gladue decision and exist in several provinces.

As a singer, drummer and traditional dancer, Kakegamick also participates in indigenous events, such as powwows. He continues to work on his relationship with his mother who, he says, is starting to talk about his past.

“Over the last seven to 10 years, she’s opened up more,” he says. “I think it’s because she sees a lot of that now. Other survivors are beginning to make her voice heard. The unfortunate thing is that we are now losing many of them. The survivors are dying. Old age. Natural causes. Many of those stories are being lost, which is unfortunate. And yes, that is why I talk a lot.”

Sofia Donato and Ali Adwan are journalism students at Carleton University.

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