Gladue Background Cultural Impact Factors

  • Substance abuse; personally, in the immediate family, extended family and community
  • Poverty; as a child, as an adult, offender's family, or community
  • Overt/Covert racism; in the community, by family members, strangers, school or workplace
  • Family (divorce, born out of wedlock) or community breakdown
  • Abuse: sexual, emotional, verbal, physical, and spiritual
  • Who was the perpetrator: stranger, family member, authority figure, friend
  • Witnessing violence; spousal, family, community
  • Unemployment, low income, lack of employment opportunity
  • Lack of educational opportunities
  • Dislocation from an Aboriginal community, loneliness and community fragmentation
  • Loss of identity, culture, ancestral knowledge
  • Foster care or adoption: at what age, for how long, was the foster/adopted family non-Aboriginal?
  • Family involvement in the criminal environment
  • Has the offender or family members attended residential school?  If so, where, how many years, how were they treated, how long were they denied family contact?
  • What are the main social issues affecting the offender's home/original community?
  • How has the offender's family/community addressed those issues?
  • How has the offender, offender's family, and the community been affected by economic conditions?
  • What is the quality of the offender's relationship with family, extended family, community?
  • Who comprise the offender's support network: spiritual, cultural, family, community
  • What culturally relevant or mainstream healing resources are available to the offender?
  • What culturally relevant alternatives to incarceration can be set in place that are healing for the offender and all others involved, including the community as a whole?

Source: Lang, S. “Reasons for Independent Background Cultural Impact Reports based on the Supreme Court of Canada Decision R. v. Gladue for Pre-Sentencing of an Aboriginal Offender”. Dakota West Consulting;