Taken from inside a North Slave Correctional Centre in Yellowknife. Photo by Pat Kane
"Send me back. I'm going to hell right now."
The disheveled Inuk man with a mop of jet-black hair continued to yell as he slammed his head against the plexiglass in the prisoner's box. Moments earlier, Justin—who is originally from the remote fly-in community of Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, but has spent several years living on the streets of Yellowknife, the capital of Canada's Northwest Territory—had tried to strangle himself with his shackled hands. If it hadn't been for a social worker frantically shooting up from her seat to bring the suicide attempt to the attention of the sheriff, he might have succeeded.
Justin was being brought before the courts last week because he had allegedly kicked an RCMP officer in the head after he was found sleeping on the floor of a bank's ATM lobby on a typically brisk -4 F night in Yellowknife. He is currently facing several other charges, including several for assault, which date as far back as 2014, but has no convictions in the NWT.
Having covered the court system on and off for local media outlets over the past several years, the scene was all too familiar: a person clearly suffering from mental health issues being dragged through the court system, when it is obvious that some form of medical response is needed.
Fortunately, Peter Harte, a defense lawyer who has been working in the North for the past 12 years, recognized Justin from his time in Cambridge Bay and submitted a request for him to undergo a psychiatric evaluation under the mental health act—an application that was reviewed and approved the following day by a judge. Had he not been there, Harte believes Justin could have been left to fend for himself.
"I was concerned that he was going to be treated not as someone with psychiatric problems but rather treated as a criminal," Harte told VICE, after his intervention on Justin's behalf. "There's a systemic problem, which is why I stepped in."
On any given day, the courtrooms of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut offer a glimpse into the complex web of inter-generational violence, mental health issues, and substance abuse in Canada's remote north, through the lens of the criminal justice system.
Outside Yellowknife Court House. Photo by the author
Last Tuesday was docket day in Yellowknife's Courtroom 2, where a lengthy list of accused, consisting mostly of young Aboriginal men, were brought before a diminutive female judge with greying hair. The few exceptions were a 40-year-old Caucasian man who plead guilty to stealing $281.90 worth of chicken, beef, and shrimp from the local grocery store, and the parade of a half-dozen white men of varying ages who were being charged with trafficking crack cocaine. The latter is a phenomenon which is increasingly on the rise in the NWT, as gangs and drug traffickers from southern provinces move North to prey on a population that is vulnerable to addiction.
The demographic of the crowd in the courtroom was unsurprising given that 87 percent of the criminals held in the territory's correctional facilities are Aboriginal, while 86 percent are male, according to figures provided by the justice department. (Although the rate of Aboriginal incarceration is high compared to the national average of 24 percent, half of NWT's population of 44,000 are Inuit, Metis, or First Nations, and only three of its 33 communities have populations where non-aboriginals are in the majority.) The crimes being tried ranged in severity from a 34-year-old man accused of stabbing a man to death and attempting to murder a woman, to the theft of a bottle of vodka from a liquor store in Inuvik.
"It's a microcosm of all the Aboriginal issues you see on the TV every day," Harte said of docket day, where the court mostly deals with procedural matters such as setting trial dates, entering pleas, and in some cases sentencing.
Of the 74 people who were scheduled to appear—some in person, others in custody via teleconference—many were up on violent charges, with sexual assault (13) and assault (14) accounting for 27 counts. Another handful of men were appearing on charges of aggravated assault or assault with a weapon, in addition to one child luring case and the aforementioned man accused of murder.
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