The Centre for Community Safety & Roots of Violence

Objectives of the Centre: Mitigating Opportunity Gaps and Systemic Barriers for Black Communities

The objective of the Centre is to reduce violence particularly addressing the historical and perennial reality of Black violence victimization and perpetration. Black identities and racialized communities are impacted more severely by systemic barriers and inequities, and in many cases these conditions are perpetuated by institutions and their neglect and apathy towards Black communities.

There is an over-representation of Black people in the Canadian justice system at all levels due to systemic barriers and over policing of racialized communities. In Ontario, Black adults make up about 5% of the adult population, but account for 14% of admissions to custody. As a result of systemic neglect across different institutions, there have been 222 homicides of school aged children (students up to age 21 years old) since 2007 in Toronto, with the victims and perpetrators predominantly Black. Over a 15-year period from 2003 to 2018, there were 5,486 children and youth injured or killed by firearms. Black youth continue to be disproportionately streamed into lower education tracks as a result of both individual prejudice and systemic factors. In addition, Black students contend with erasure, which is itself arguably a form of violence. Both invisibility within curricula and the predominantly white demographic makeup of educators continue to negatively affect Black students. When it comes to health, infection rates are significantly higher in health regions with a higher percentage of Black residents.

In response to such trends and evolving crises, YAAACE is launching the Centre for Community Safety and Roots of Violence focusing on the following ten deliverables:

• 1. Advocate for dismantling anti-Black racism within all institutions through education, advocacy, and awareness campaigns. There will be a focus on creating content that is accessible to the community including a podcast series that examines systemic inequities as roots of violence.
• 2. Assemble and lead a cross-sector coalition to meet quarterly in a consultative and advisory capacity to identify current gaps in policies and practices across institutions and work towards innovative solutions.
• 3. Advocating for "Impact of Race and Cultural Assessments” (ICRA) which are pre-sentencing reports that help judges to better understand the effect of poverty, marginalization, racism, and social exclusion on the offender and their life experience. The centre will provide Impact of Race and Cultural Assessments as part of pre-sentencing reports for Black identities.
• 4. Training others as researchers to examine topics and issues related to community safety and risk factors and protective factors associated with roots of violence.
• 5. Offer a range of workshops and trainings led by people with lived experiences which are accessible to frontline workers, professionals, and practitioners working with diverse backgrounds and within racialized communities.
• 6. Host an annual symposium and conference examining factors that exasperate violence within the Canadian context.
• 7.Provide access to experts, people with lived experiences, and advisory committees to municipalities, cities, and various levels of government.
• 8. Advocating for data-driven systemic reform and institutional accountability through collecting and sharing of data sets with the public.
• 9. Create a culturally reflective curriculum for youth and young adults that teaches life skills and supports them with navigating institutions and their systems.
• 10. Sharing of best practices through creation of a knowledge hub.

WHAT WE'LL DO

The Centre will be Ontario-centric at the onset and work towards establishing a national presence. YAAACE is in a unique position to lead this work as we provide programming and are involved with data-driven knowledge-mobilization efforts. We will be working with various stakeholders with a similar passion for social justice and equity. This involves supporting initiatives, policies, and frameworks such as City of Toronto’s SafeTO Strategy which involves the establishment of a Toronto Office to Prevent Gun Violence, Federal Framework to Reduce Recidivism, and Canada’s Black Justice Strategy. The reach of the Centre will facilitate more effective sharing of data, formation of new collaborations, new research and publications, policy recommendations, knowledge mobilization, and systems accountability.

Take a listen to our Safer Communities Canada Podcast where we discuss many of the topics that relate to the work that The Centre engages in on both Spotify and Youtube.