Monday the Free Press published a story about a growing trend in the Canadian justice system. Simply put, the idea is that when judges issue a sentence they should offer a kind of racial discount for prisoners of indigenous and African descent. The idea has become binding law in at least one province through the use of something called an Impact of Race and Culture Assessment (IRCA).

What is an IRCA? It’s a brief document which minority defendants can submit for consideration, essentially arguing that their history as members of a minority group and victim of systemic racism has played a part in whatever crime they’ve been convicted of committing.

The story offers several examples including the story of Edward Smith, a 23-year-old West African immigrant who, back in 2019, agreed to go along on a robbery with his cousin and another man. Smith didn’t have a gun but the other two did. He was arrested and pleaded guilty to two charges. And then a lawyer wrote an IRCA for him. It’s admittedly a rough story: Born in a refugee camp, abandoned by his father when he was one, being poor and not knowing the language in Canada.

The document mentions some bullying but there’s no documentation, no proof of any kind. In fact there are hardly any specific instances that could be verified. And what does all of this have to do with his decision to rob someone at 23? According to Edward Smith, absolutely nothing. “I didn’t face racism,” he told the author of the piece. As for the IRCA, he admits, “It was my only way out of this situation.” Points for honesty, I guess.

Smith could have been facing 8 years in prison. Instead he was released after 6 months.

Another story described in the piece involves Andy Nevin who was riding his bike to see a new apartment that his partner and two sons were about to move into. But he never made it to the apartment. That day in 2015 he was killed by the driver of a pickup truck who’d allegedly fallen asleep at the wheel.

In court, the driver, Deinsburg St.-Hilaire, testified that he’d been out all night at a wedding. It was almost six a.m., and he was speeding home—going almost 20 miles over the limit—when he nodded off. He came to when he heard a thud. He didn’t see anything in his rearview mirror. He said he thought he’d hit a mailbox.

Except that when he got home, St.-Hilaire covered his Ford F-250 pickup truck in a tarp, and, within a few days, he had the hood and side panel changed…

After repairing his truck, St.-Hilaire decamped to an airport hotel, hoping to evade the cops. Nine days after the accident, he was arrested…

He was found guilty of obstructing the investigation but claimed he hadn’t gone to the police because of his experiences of racism in school. The judge in his case seemed to agree.

At the trial, Judge Catherine Aitken said she believed the defendant “wanted to do the right thing but did not have the confidence to do so out of fear.” She added: “I also accept that this fear was likely heightened as a result of Mr. St. Hilaire’s experience with racism as a black person growing up in this community.”

He had been facing 2 years in prison for the incident including his attempts to avoid justice for nine days. His actual sentence: 100 hours community service. Even in Canada there are attorneys who can still see that’s not right, though they’re mostly afraid to say so out loud.

“The judge basically calls the system out for being systemically racist even though the system bends over backwards to be reverse racist,” a prominent defense attorney in Toronto told me…

“The idea that somehow this cover-up had anything to do with racism or this never-demonstrated canard of systemic racism is patently false,” the attorney said. “To use language we’d normally associate with murder, this was not a momentary lapse in judgment but planned and deliberate. That’s what makes the judge’s ruling so egregious, and the idea that the defendant gets some kind of break because of something that happened years ago, something completely unprovable and possibly untrue that has nothing to do with Andy Nevin’s death—that’s absurd. Actually, it’s offensive.”

He added: “This is the scam of scams.” He said that lots of people knew it, and no one would say it openly. Including him. “Criticizing IRCAs would mean career suicide.”

There’s a lot more to the piece including a description of how this train of legal thought got started. I’m not surprised that it is happening there but I’m a little surprised it’s not happening here.