Our work seeks to prevent, repair, and move beyond harm for all those impacted by crime. Our newsletter Quaker Concern comes out three times a year sharing stories from our criminal justice work and how we’re making a difference.
Canadian Quakers believe that justice must be compassionate and focus on how to heal rather than how to punish. This is what’s called “penal abolition”—working to put an end to punishment and harm throughout the criminal justice system. This is the ground from which our methods, processes, and partnerships emerge.
A particular focus for our criminal justice work is on children and youth. Policing and imprisonment regularly harm children and youth directly or indirectly. They’re particularly vulnerable when they enter the justice system, but are also collateral victims when their parents are arrested or imprisoned.
Children are often ignored in the process of a parent’s arrest, remand, sentencing, and imprisonment, yet they experience a range of psychological, social, and economic hardships. Many challenges are faced by children who are born into or living in prison with a parent, as well as children who are left on the outside.
As a practicum student, I was nervous about stepping into the work of Canadian Friends Service Committee (CFSC). I was afraid I wouldn’t fit in and unsure if my values would truly align with CFSC’s, since I’m not a Quaker. When I reviewed the testimonies and Canadian Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends’…
Have you ever had a pen pal? Was it a good experience? Did you learn about where they lived, their customs and culture, or perhaps their life circumstances, including the joys and the sorrows? When I was in grade 7, our teacher decided that assigning pen pals to the class would be a great learning…
When I close my eyes and think about lived experience, I can still hear the words of children and youth I’ve met over the years: “They asked me questions in front of my parents. I couldn’t say anything with them in the room.” “It took me a year to say something to the teacher. I…
A major concern of CFSC’s in recent years has been the plight of children when their parents or caregivers are incarcerated. One way CFSC seeks to move this work forward is by using the United Nations as an avenue for advocacy and awareness-raising. Canada is a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Rights…
In our criminal justice work, CFSC seeks to elevate the voices of those with lived experience. We believe that listening to these voices is essential for genuine and meaningful system change. For obvious reasons, direct access to the voices of people currently or formerly incarcerated can be hard to find. Intriguingly, the development of podcasting…
What do you believe? can be a challenging question for an unprogrammed Quaker like me, but the minutes of our business meetings contain collective wisdom, innovation, Spirit, and Light that might provide some answers. Reading one of those minutes nearly a decade ago helped lead me to membership in the Religious Society of Friends: Minute…
During my years working in the youth justice field, I was often stunned by the repeated gaps I encountered between policy and practice. Policy was regularly recited as assurance that legal obligations were being met (all necessary medical and dental care was being offered, prisoners were free from physical punishment, and so forth). Frequently, the…
In the summer of 2020, the catastrophic death of George Floyd created a sudden swell of public attention regarding calls to defund the police, the over-representation of Black and Indigenous people in the criminal justice system, and systemic racism in Canada. CFSC discerned the need to respond, and began planning for a new project—The Only…
Defund the police! It’s a demand that is all over the streets, the news, and in our minds right now. It’s a demand brought on by centuries of inequality and injustice. Although public attention was reignited in May following the killing of George Floyd by a police officer in the United States, Canada is certainly…
After dinner one night, a friend of my mother’s shared a story that has stayed with me. She had been shopping at the local mall with her kids when police officers stopped her and took her in for questioning. She matched the description of a shoplifter they’d been looking for. As it happened, she had…
Scroll down for a list of all articles about Canadian Friends Service Committee’s criminal justice work.