Month February 2025

Justice Canada Publishes Black Justice Strategy Implementation Plan

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Canada’s Department of Justice has announced the release of Canada’s Black Justice Strategy Implementation Plan. The Plan, entitled Toward Transformative Change: an Implementation Plan for Canada’s Black Justice Strategy, creates a 10-year timeline to address the over-representation of Black people in Canada’s justice system caused by systemic inequalities. Proposed funding investments to support Canada’s first ever Black Justice Strategy would be spread across nine departments and agencies. Proposed investments of $23.6 million over two years would support the following Department of Justice Canada activities, beginning in the 2025-26 fiscal year:

  • Develop Black-specific court worker/navigation services
  • Expand the use of Impact of Race and Culture Assessment reports at decision points in the criminal justice system other than sentencing
  • Develop supports for Black victims and survivors of crime
  • Extend the External Steering Group to provide expert advice on implementing the Black Justice Strategy
  • Develop Black-specific diversion, conferencing, and bail supervision projects for youth

Toward Transformative Change: an Implementation Plan for Canada’s Black Justice Strategy, released by the Department of Justice Canada is available online in English here: https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/cj-jp/cbjs-scjn/ttc-ect/index.html.

Étapes pour un changement transformateur : Plan de mise en œuvre de la Stratégie canadienne en matière de justice pour les personnes noires est disponible en français ici : https://www.justice.gc.ca/fra/jp-cj/scjn-cbjs/ect-ttc/index.html.

Information for this post was gleaned from the Department of Justice Canada’s news release on Canada’s Black Justice Strategy’s Implementation Plan, available in full here:  https://www.canada.ca/en/department-justice/news/2025/02/release-of-canadas-black-justice-strategys-implementation-plan-an-important-step-toward-transformational-change-in-the-criminal-justice-system-in-c.html.

New Book Explores Legal Innovation through Conversations on Technology, the Legal Profession, and Societal Change

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A recently published, open access book from publisher, Cambridge University Press explores legal innovation, its impacts, challenges, and opportunities through conversations focusing on technology, the legal profession and societal change. The book includes contributions from world-leading experts. Some topics covered by the book include:

  • Dispute Resolution Transformed by Technology
  • Corporate Governance in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
  • Innovation in Financial Services and Supervision
  • Artificial Intelligence and Legal Services
  • Whether Digitalisation Will Help the Five Billion People Without Meaningful Access to Justice

Legal Innovation: Conversations about Technology, the Legal Profession and Societal Change, edited by Felix Steffek and Mihoko Sumida is available online here: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/legal-innovation/8EBED6F418ED6BAFACAAF08DA2E4F173.

Policy Brief Explains Relevance of ‘People-centred’ Indicator of Access to Justice for UN SDG 16

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A UNDP policy brief published in February examines the importance of measuring and advancing ‘people-centred’ access to justice. The focus of the brief is the indicator for UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 16.3.3: the “proportion of the population who have experienced a dispute in the past two years and who accessed a formal or informal dispute resolution mechanism, by type of mechanism”.

The brief provides insights on how SDG 16.3.3 data can be used to increase access to civil justice.

The policy brief highlights the reliance of SDG 16.3.3 on the following concepts and measures:

  • People-centred experiences, measuring the experience of legal problems from the perspective of those who face them rather than the needs and views of service providers. Disaggregation by individuals’ socio-demographic characteristics (such as age, sex, migratory background, etc.) and geographical variables allows for the identification of vulnerable groups/areas.
  • In-depth assessment of how people address the problems they face, both inside and outside of formal institutions or mechanisms. SDG Indicator 16.3.3. provides a mechanism to monitor public policies that enhance the functioning of formal or informal dispute resolution mechanisms (top-down policies) as well as those that empower the population (bottom-up policies).
  • Insights from household surveys across the world by surveying a representative sample of the population rather than relying on administrative data. The survey questions can provide actionable data insights on 16.3.3 and can be integrated into ongoing national surveys as an additional module on access to justice.
  • Cross-country comparisons on access to justice, while also allowing for country-specific dispute resolution mechanisms and reasons for not using them.

The policy brief, “From Data to Action Strengthening Civil Justice with SDG 16.3.3” is available in English here: https://www.undp.org/publications/data-action-strengthening-civil-justice-sdg-1633.