Vanessa Slater discusses the focus and inspiration for her paper which considers the relevancy, advantages and challenges of shifting Canada’s criminal justice system toward emotionally intelligent approaches to law.
"The retributive focus of the colonial legal system results in much trauma, particularly with respect to criminal justice. The enlightenment that comes with becoming trauma-informed can assist lawyers, decision makers and others involved in addressing conflict to overcome deep-rooted systemic hurdles. Viewing conflict through a relational lens which embraces principles of restorative justice supports relinquishing control over the achievement of “justice” and instead focusing on restoration." - Vanessa Slater
Myrna McCallum:
I'm Myrna McCallum, [inaudible 00:00:02] lawyer and passionate promoter of trauma-informed lawyering. Welcome back to the Trauma-Informed-Lawyer podcast season two, folks. As you know, I believe that law schools and bar courses are missing a critical competency requirement in their curriculum, trauma-informed lawyering.
Becoming a trauma-informed lawyer will among other things, challenge you to critically reflect on your personal behaviors, beliefs, and biases, call on you to positively transform the way you approach advocacy, guide your practice to avoid doing further harm to others and ask that you commit to remaining open to learn new and old knowledge you didn't know you needed before beginning your career. Your education starts right here, right now.
Transcripts for season two have been generously sponsored by the BC Law Foundation.
Welcome back to another episode of the Trauma-Informed Lawyer Podcast. So before I get into introducing today's guest, I want to say the Trauma-Informed Justice Course is coming up July 20th to 22nd. It's being delivered over Zoom Events. Anyone anywhere in the world can register to take this course. BC Lawyers, you get 18 CPD credits if you sign up to take this course. Registration is still open. You can go to my website, myrnamccollum.co to get more information and to register.
I want to give a shout out to a number of folks who stepped up. I needed sponsors and they're like, "Count me in." Elsa Wyllie she is a lawyer here in Vancouver. Thank you, Elsa. Because of your generosity, an individual from a non-profit org can now take this course. Sara Forte and Forte law, if you need Unemployment Lawyer or Workplace Investigation, Forte Law in Surrey, those are the folks to go to. Thank you, Forte Law.
Pfefferle Law Office, if you need a criminal defense lawyer in Saskatoon and surrounding areas, Brian's your man. Allison Ruch of Syncopate Financial Leadership, thank you Allison for your generosity. Mandell Pinder where it all began for me. Thank you Mandell Pinder for stepping up. And of course a couple anonymous sponsors stepped up as well. Thank you. I know who you are. No one else knows who you are, but thank you all for your generosity. There were three of them amongst the two spots.
And then most recently Dan and Scott Jones, they waived their speaking fees and they said, "You know what, Myna? Use that money to offer a sponsored seat to somebody who's on your wait list." And I have a number of people on my wait list and they did it on behalf of Just Us On Justice & Other Things podcast.
It's a podcast that they just started. If you haven't listened to it, go listen to it. It's awesome and it's so funny and it's vulnerable. And if you like this podcast, you're going to like that podcast. So Just Us On Justice & Other Things as well as Twisted Oak Yoga and Wellness. Thank you for stepping up. I still need more sponsors, folks, so if you are interested, please hit me up on LinkedIn at my name or @thetraumainformedlawyer on Instagram or @thetilpodcast on Twitter. I'm easy to find. So if you are interested in sponsoring someone, come and find me and let me know. My hands will go up to you in full gratitude.
So yeah, this course is coming up really soon. It's being delivered over Zoom Events July 20th to 22nd. I am nervous. Nervous. The days are going by and I'm running out of time to prep and my life is chaotic right now because as life would have it, I've got about 18 spinning plates right now and I thought I'd only have the one, but such as life. Yeah. I'm super nervous.
People have asked me, "Well, will you offer this course again?" I don't know. I really don't know. Let's see how this one goes that will inform whether or not I do this again. But that said, I'm just incredibly grateful that so many people when I called them to say, "Hey, will you be presenters in this chorus? Will you show up? Lend your voice, lend your expertise?" They were like, "Yeah, absolutely." So in addition to Scott Jones and Dan Jones, we've got Trina McGuirk.
She is going to talk to us about trauma in the brain. We've got Justice Patrice Band who is going to talk about compassion fatigue and burnout from the perspective of a sitting judge. Dr. Amar Dhall, you all listened to him on the last episode. Natasha William, she is an expert in JEDDI, justice, equity, decolonization, diversity and inclusion. And of course me, you're going to see me and hear me and I think it's going to be an amazing three days and it's going to go so quick.
In addition to all those speakers, you're also going to hear from Vanessa Slater. She comes from the social work background. She's a mediator, restorative justice practitioner and conflict coach, and she offers trauma-informed approaches for marginalized populations as a system navigator. She believes in gentle workplace investigation inquiries, which is interesting to me because I do some workplace investigations. I didn't get to talk to her about how we define gentle, maybe next time.
Anyway, I was really thrilled to connect with Vanessa because every few months or so I'm on CanLII looking for new judges to fan girl over, who's writing trauma-informed decisions and I'm doing all that. The last time I was on there a few months back, I came across a paper called From Retribution to Restoration, Emotionally Intelligent Approaches to the Law. Vanessa wrote this paper, she delves into who's affected by trauma within the legal system.
What kind of training do legal professionals need on trauma? What is the connection between trauma and criminal behavior and what does restorative justice have to offer? I couldn't believe actually, after reading her paper that I've never had an RJ practitioner on this show. That was weird to me. I don't know, it's just I guess the way it goes, but I'm so happy to have one on the show now. I hope you enjoy this conversation. If you want to hear more from Vanessa, I'm sure you will, she's presenting on day three of the Trauma-Informed Justice Course. So sign up and you can hear more from her there. I hope you enjoy this show today.
Welcome Vanessa Slater to the trauma-informed Lawyer podcast. It's really good to have you here today.
Vanessa Slater:
Thanks Myrna. I'm so happy to be with you.
Myrna McCallum:
I'm so happy to have you. I stumbled across you and your name, I'm not sure, I think it was on CanLII and I was looking some stuff up about trauma-informed decision making, vicarious trauma in the courtroom. I know Justice Band talks about it. Justice Green talks about it and I was like, "Who else is talking about it?" And then I saw Vanessa later and I was like, "Who's Vanessa Slater?" Then I pulled it up and I saw that you had recently published a paper called From Retribution to Restoration, Emotionally Intelligent Approaches to the Law. Tell me about that. What inspired that?
Vanessa Slater:
I guess the word retribution is I think so tied into our colonial justice system, this eye-for-an-eye thinking, punishment. It's how we've done things here as settlers for a long time and I think it needs revisiting. I think that a return to more restorative approaches, more as you would call them traditional approaches, is very long overdue because the harm that the criminal justice system and our carceral settings are causing individuals, families, societies, is really incalculable. We really can't measure it properly with dollars or in terms of human trauma and disruption of family communities. Yeah. It's time for a change and I think there's lots of things we can do, we just need to get the people who have the power to start buying into it.
Myrna McCallum:
And who do you think has the power?
Vanessa Slater:
I think colleges and universities, I think the Bar Association, I think obviously judges, lawyers, police officers, hospital workers. People who work with people. People who come into contact with those who are sometimes just at their worst, they are literally at their worst and they are very often victims themselves. Whether they have been actually victimized or identify as a victim is significant in terms of what they bring into their world, into their community, into their worldview. And I think a lot of people out there don't realize that our prison systems and our criminal justice systems are full of very, very hurt people, most of whom have been hurt before the age of 10.
Myrna McCallum:
Yes, I've heard my friend Ian Smith, who's been on the podcast talk a little bit about that as he has defended a number of folks who experience addictions and he has highlighted and as has Gabor Mate and Dan Jones that really at the root, a lot of that offending behavior, if you want to call it that, is somebody who's been traumatized as a child.
Vanessa Slater:
Absolutely. And Dan Jones has some incredible stories to share around that with all of his years in the trenches as an officer. And I think he was also a corrections officer before that, wasn't he? Yeah. So he has that wonderful story. Your listeners should go back and listen to his interview talking to you about his adopted daughter, Nicole. That is such a perfect example of a retributive system working more towards restoration, connection, healing, and providing a sense of community and connection, which is ultimately what's what's going to save us all.
Myrna McCallum:
It's interesting that you say that. I'm planning and doing lots of work to create an awesome course in justice. As I'm doing that, one of the voices that keeps coming up in my head, and as I was packing yesterday, because I'm moving, I came across again my book from Harold Johnson, Peace and Good Order: The Case for Indigenous Justice in Canada. He talks about exactly what, well, he talked about what you're talking about and he often has told a story as he talked about the difference between retribution restoration or I think in his case he called it redemption when he shared the story of a fellow named Hillary who was a drunk driver who killed his brother.
Vanessa Slater:
Right.
Myrna McCallum:
And he said prison did nothing for Hillary. It did nothing to heal what he had done. It did nothing in terms of real accountability and it surely didn't earn his way back into community. And he said it wasn't until they had a conversation and decided that through Mothers Against Drunk Driving to go into schools to talk together about their experience, Harold talked about what it was like to lose a brother to a drunk driver. And Hillary talked about what it was like to take a life and wake up in a cell the next day and not know what he had done.
Vanessa Slater:
Yeah. Not remember a thing.
Myrna McCallum:
Not remember a thing. And he said this is how Hillary earned his way back into community. This is how healing happened, this is how restoration occurred. And [inaudible 00:12:18] it a lot. I'm really glad that you mentioned that. For people who are less familiar with ... Or we call it, I don't know, do we call it restorative justice or transformative justice or what do we call it? And really what is it? How would you explain it, Vanessa?
Vanessa Slater:
Restorative and transformative practitioners each have their own lane, but there's certainly an intersection. I tend to use restorative justice or RJ, and much of my teachings were from Howard Zehr, who was considered one of the mainstays of restorative justice philosophy. And also someone like Rupert Ross who talks about the restorative practices that are innate to indigenous law itself in terms of circles, in terms of community.
And when you talk about someone earning their way back into community, that's very much a restorative justice philosophy, in terms of reintegration is definitely one of the tenants where someone has the right, as a fellow human being, as part of a community to reenter a community once they have fulfilled certain obligations to repair the harm that they have caused. And of course, this is not the case for all crimes. This is not a blanket solution because there are unfortunately some very, very serious offenders who will not and perhaps should not ever see the light of day again, so to speak.
But this is not what we're talking about here. We're talking about practices which allow people who have experienced harm, to connect with the person who has wronged them or harm their community. And in that way they can get the less binary responses that they might have in the colonial justice system. They're able to say to the person who caused them harm, "Why this? Why me? Why did you choose me? Why was I the victim of your attack?" And typically people don't get to ask those questions in a courtroom.
The conflict, the struggle, the harm is taken away from them often by lawyers. And they lose their voice, their autonomy, their ability to make sense and meaning of the harm and the crime as it affected them personally. Because it is so deeply personal for people, the way each of us experience trauma and crime. So the one size fits all of a courtroom with a judge and lawyers and people typically don't actually get a say. We have victim impact statements and that type of thing, but I don't think that goes far enough. And I don't think it offers accountability to the person who's caused harm.
And in most cases, in the vast majority of crimes, the people who are locked up in Canada, for example, they're in prison for theft drug offenses, less violent assaults. And by and large, according to the research, and there is research now out there that's been done, these people do want the opportunity to return to community and they usually do. The problem is they usually do without the supports that restorative practices and transformative practices offer them by making connections, by having a community circle, by having people decide how they're going to repair harm and to whom
Myrna McCallum:
Somebody say not that long ago that according to the numbers, the majority of folks who are actually in prison or a good chunk of them are sitting in remand.
Vanessa Slater:
For first offenders, this is a really terrible and dangerous place to be for a number of reasons, whether it's COVID or TB or assault or making connections or getting addicted to other ... The drug supply in the prison system right now, as you probably know, is really contaminated. And prisons are an incredibly dangerous place to be, just what it does to one's flight or ...
I know you're going to be talking about fight or flight, but having that heightened sense of danger 24/7 is really detrimental. I was lucky enough to be part of a program called the Walls to Bridges Program in 2019 and 2020 as part of a college course at Durham College. And Durham College in Ontario was the first college allowed to go into a federal medium security prison and offer the Walls to Bridges Program whereby outside students like me and incarcerated people or inside students work together to get a college credit.
And our theme was resilience. And so we studied and wrote and collaborated once a week on the theme of resilience inside a federal prison in Ontario. And it was really eye-opening and heart-opening, I would also say, to be in that setting in a learning environment with people who have a very different reality to my own and yet who are so open and happy to have us in.
And it was so great to break down those walls and get to know people who are just really wanting to make changes in their lives, real changes, but it's very difficult to do so. And unfortunately right at the end of our course, COVID shut it down. So we didn't actually get to wrap it up properly, but it's a wonderful program, really interesting.
Myrna McCallum:
I want to ask this question because I have found as universities in particular and other large organizations are looking at ways to implement what they will often call informal resolutions to things happening in the workplace, whether it's bullying, harassment, sexual harassment, or other forms of sexual misconduct, they are exploring and grappling with whether restorative justice is a reasonable pathway to resolution. And I know that for some of those groups, one of the things I think they grapple with is figuring out first and foremost, or deciding first and foremost, who decides whether that's even an option. And can you just comment a little bit on who should be deciding whether that's even a viable option?
Vanessa Slater:
Absolutely. Yeah. That is really the very first question is who is it up to? And I would say the first person it's up to is the person who's experienced harm. He or she needs to decide if that is a course of justice that they would like to see, if their preferred remedy of choice is to keep it internal, to keep it out of the criminal justice system and go forward and either meet with that person face to face with a facilitator or two, or do something like shuttle mediation or even video conferencing depending on the proximity, the physical proximity and whatever that person is comfortable with. That has to be the first thing. And the second thing really is the person who's caused harm has to want to repair that harm. And if there's a disingenuous attitude or, "I'm going to get off easy," kind of attitude, it cannot go ahead.
And that's where a really skilled facilitator has to come in because so much of RJ has to do with the prep, the behind the scenes, the trauma-informed interviewing techniques, putting support people in place, helping people process on both sides. And then of course, especially if it's in a college setting, the college or the university, the institution, whether it's a workplace, any institution has to have those mechanisms in place to support that and to support also reintegration for both parties.
Sometimes witnesses can be interviewed and as you know, the more witnesses you have in an investigation, the less confidentiality there can be. So it's a lot of nuances with restorative justice. But one of its real pillars, one of its real strengths I would argue, is that it really can be tailor made to the situation depending on who's involved. And there have been cases in Ontario where sexual assault has been dealt with in a restorative justice context and quite successfully.
And the person who has received, the victim survivor has they been able to have autonomy over the process and choose how the room is set up, when things happen and make a number of choices that really promote empowerment and prevent more trauma. And ultimately that's the difference between that situation and something that happens in a courtroom.
Myrna McCallum:
As I'm listening to you, I'm hearing really probably what is missing in a courtroom. Folks don't typically get choice, they don't get to make decisions, they don't get to choose the configuration of the room. Really, I guess in many ways they're denied personal agency and restorative justice approaches can give them a lot of decision making power. A lot of personal agency in these processes, which I know in my experience, anytime we can find ways to allow people to make decisions about how they show up, where they are seated, when they show up, when they are given breaks ...
And there's a whole other number of things I think that lawyers can do to really be flexible and adapt to meet people where they are, when they have that experience, even in a litigation process, the risk of triggering and traumatizing people can be significantly diminished. And I would say one of the reasons why I'm probably so busy is because lawyers are often saying, "Well, what should we be doing? How can we change?" Because we recognize inherently litigation is traumatizing, it's difficult, it's rigid, it really wasn't made to accommodate humanity and vulnerability and fragility and all those things.
Vanessa Slater:
Absolutely. Yeah. You would know more about the institutions of law than I would, but which is why they've got to start changing how we train lawyers. I'm not a lawyer. I had a career in social services for a long time and eventually I burnt out. That vicarious trauma got to me and I was bringing it home and it was showing up and it was not good. So I went back to school at age 48 and became a mediator and saw another way to help from the other side.
And from there got really interested in the restorative practices that are possible and it can be applied to youth. We just had a little symposium through ADRIO, which is the Alternative Resolution Institute of Ontario about restorative justice. And we had four different practitioners come in to speak about their craft and the ways that they apply RJ.
And it was really informative. There was a principal who has worked with school boards across Southern Ontario to implement circle practices as a preventative swim upstream measure for kids to deal with conflict. We had an indigenous mediator who talked about his connection to the seven teachings and how he used that in his practice. We had a woman from CoSA Canada who works with former sex offenders looking at reintegration into community through community connection, accountability, because when people are connected, when they get out, the recidivism goes down something like between 70 and 80% because they have a small sense of community. And that stigmatization is greatly reduced and it's a safety issue at that point. It's amazing.
Myrna McCallum:
That is amazing. And it's interesting that you talk about really the power of the circle. Recently I heard Brene Brown on a podcast or something talking about her data, she says data, her data, whatever that is, wherever she got that, she says, the data suggests that seating people at a circular table promotes connection. And when you have to have difficult conversations, whatever, engage in a process, that's really the preferred space to have, is in a circle. And I'm like, "But indigenous people have known this for forever, done this for forever." So I don't know if her data included indigenous subject matter experts, but whatever.
Vanessa Slater:
Yeah, circles are primordial. They're based around the fire. We used to sit around a fire.
Myrna McCallum:
Yeah, they're powerful.
Vanessa Slater:
Absolutely.
Myrna McCallum:
I reflect now on, I went to an all native high school in Saskatoon at the time was called Jodicat and it's now called Oskayak. And one of the things John Winsera was our principal, really big, tall, blonde white guy. And one of the things that they did at the school, which I thought was really cool is once a week, they all had the entire student body get in a circle in the gymnasium. We would have a smudging ceremony. So we all had to smudge. And when we were all done, we all had to go around the circle and shake each other's hands. You had to shake hands before you left the gym. And I really think in retrospect, what that did for us, in addition up to of course, grounding us in culture and ceremony was it reminded us of our connection to each other. Hard to hold animosity ...
Vanessa Slater:
Absolutely.
Myrna McCallum:
... when you engaged in ceremony with someone and when you are required to actually press flesh in the form of a handshake with someone.
Vanessa Slater:
Totally agree. Amazing. Wow, what an amazing and cheap and effective initiative. Yeah. we're less likely to harm people we have a connection with, because you didn't know everyone in that high school, but you touched their hands, that means you had a connection.
Myrna McCallum:
I knew of everybody because it was a small high school.
Vanessa Slater:
It was small, yeah.
Myrna McCallum:
But I didn't know everybody. And what I think that did in many ways was it was largely preventative. You don't think to have conflict with these individuals that you're going to shake hands with next and have a smudge with.
Vanessa Slater:
Yeah. It's all our relations. It comes back to that.
Myrna McCallum:
Exactly. All my relations. Okay. You're just taking me way back to like '91 right now, but let's talk a little bit about what it is you think lawyers should know. So in addition to confronting the reality that our processes are really quite traumatizing, we're dealing with traumatized individuals and treating them in a dehumanizing way, oftentimes by pushing them into a process that doesn't acknowledge their humanity and their needs. What do you think we need to know?
Vanessa Slater:
I can talk just a tiny bit just from my own experience. As someone who 15 years ago went through a divorce and had no concept of the legal system whatsoever, it was really my first introduction to a lawyer period. And not only was I reeling from where I was at in my life, with two little kids and trying to navigate the legal system, it was really, I just remember going into that lawyer's office with my heart pounding, didn't know what to expect, found it incredibly expensive, wasn't sure what the timelines were going to be.
My lawyer used a lot of language that I didn't understand. So as a lay person just in general, I think it would be great for lawyers to really understand that when people are coming to see them, they're under a tremendous amount of stress, typically. And when one is under a tremendous amount of stress, one's brain doesn't work properly. So dates, timelines, emotional regulation, all of the information that lawyers need to put a case together or to submit a claim of some sort, it's all very challenging, which is why I always tell people to bring someone with you.
So I found that really hard and it took a long time. And I've also guided a number of former clients through the criminal justice system, including through court, also through insurance claims and discovery and that type of thing. And also some tribunals where lawyers would say, especially to my clients who had brain injuries, for example, "Well, what do you mean you can't remember your last either address or what date this happened and what date that happened and who was there when and what."
And so people get flustered and it's never a good place to be. It's incredibly disempowering. It's incredibly upsetting. I've seen people have reactions to lawyers questions, whether it's a complete shutdown and flat effect to the other continuum where I've had someone flip a desk in an actual intake meeting because this lawyer just did not know how to handle it. And granted my client was tricky and I was doing my best to keep things contained, but it was cruel and unusual.
So I think lawyers need to really understand that people are bringing trauma. And as you know, was it Justice Kael McKenzie that you had on the show said they come bringing trauma and they bring big trauma. These are the worst times of their lives. And I think that based on what I know, a lot of lawyers go through school and they start their practice and they know the law inside and out. But what they don't understand, what they don't have access to, either through their own curious inquiry or through their training, is how to connect with people emotionally to put them at ease, which ultimately will bring out the best in them and get them what they need.
Because lawyers have an important job to do. They do want to serve and help and advance things, but sometimes I think they can make things trickier through their line of question. Things are not binary, things are not always chronological for people. And I think that that really needs to change, the way people are trained. I assume it's getting better now, but I'm not sure.
Myrna McCallum:
Oh God, I don't know. I don't know if it's getting better. I just received an email, the two emails this morning from a lawyer who was really quite abrupt and abrasive and making assumptions about why I'm unavailable for something. So I don't know. I know that I am talking to more and more lawyers and I'm being invited in to speak with larger and larger groups of people and judges as well, and they're asking, they're curious, "What don't we know that we should know?"
And I'm really glad that they're asking that question. However, I think they struggle with, "Okay, well I'm hearing you about empathy and connection and compassion, recognition of trauma and all of these things," but when rubber meets the road and you're actually in a cross examination or you are in some other kind of introducing the evidence and how does it work then? And I don't have all the answers, but I do encourage folks to explore what is possible.
Because all we know right now is how we've always done things. And we know that the way we've always done things hasn't been good for a lot of people. And so now let's get a little bit creative and think about, okay, so we know that this way of working, although it's been tried and tested, may need some adapting. Similar to what has happened with COVID, lots of courts were resistant to embracing technology. Can't work, won't work, we can't do it. And then we had to do it. And what do you know? In many cases, it worked really well.
Vanessa Slater:
Oh, in lots of cases.
Myrna McCallum:
Yeah.
Vanessa Slater:
Especially for people who are survivors of IPV and domestic violence, they could actually have hearings without sitting in the same room as their abuser. It was amazing for some people. Not for everyone.
Myrna McCallum:
Yeah, exactly. So I think if we could do that in this time, why not also start to explore and ask the question what other changes could we make that create a more accessible humane experience for people?
Vanessa Slater:
Absolutely. And it's changing. By the time someone is in the courtroom, one would hope that, especially in the criminal justice system, that their lawyer has said to them, Gabor Mate's question, "What happened to you?" As opposed to, "What is wrong with you?" And getting that context. And I think how Gladue came about in terms of what happened to you, let's put this in context. Let's round out this human being in a holistic way and really understand how the heck they got into my office or how the heck they got into this remand center in the first place.
So definitely it takes a bit more time. And that is one of the main criticisms of RJ is it takes more time. And that is true, it does take more time, but ultimately it is cheaper because it allows people to return to community and not re-offend in ways that they have before because that shift has happened. There's that shift that has happened where they know that there is support and they are seen as people who are deserving and earn their way back into community.
Myrna McCallum:
Yes. Well, it's cheaper and it offers an opportunity for healing and it promotes connection. There's so many things, and I would say what you're talking about in respective restorative justice really mirrors a lot of the benefits of becoming a trauma-informed lawyer and engaging in a trauma-informed way. I think this is a good time to of segue into the other half of your paper, which is it emotionally intelligent approaches to law. Let's talk a little bit about what you mean.
Vanessa Slater:
Well, I think it really builds on what we were just chatting about. I think it's not just law, but it's emotionally intelligent processes to how people interact with the law. So police officers, bylaw officers, that first point of contact. And sometimes it's not even police, it's bylaw officers, then it escalates or youth workers. And so an emotionally intelligent approach is really looking at why don't we offer RJ or the opportunity of RJ as the first point of call, not the last thing, but before people get caught up in the system.
Especially for people who are over 18 years old, it's really life changing. Once you hit that 18th birthday, things are very different. And years ago, I was the ED of a youth center and I helped a number of kids with court diversion programs and mental health diversion programs working in concert with the school board, with police, with families, with guardians, to really promote, and these were smaller instances and smaller crimes, things like B and Es or graffiti tagging, that type of thing.
And these young people were offered the opportunity to repair that harm and circumvent the criminal justice system. And by the time they were done either repairing the harm and they often had a say in what they wanted to do, and they had to go and work with the BIA or the store owners whose property they damaged. And let me tell you, that's not easy to do. People think it's really a cake walk to go out there and repair harm.
But for a 17 and a half year old to knock on a hairdresser's door and say, "I'm the one who broke your windows on Friday night," or, "I'm the one who tagged your building," it's not easy at all. And there needs to be support in place for that and support in place for them to decide how to repair that harm. But I'll tell you, I know for a fact that those youth who made bad decisions that night, they didn't do it again.
And they were able to stay out of the criminal justice system and have a stain on their record or have no record. So it does take people and it takes a bit of a community to make it happen, but ultimately it's really educational, really informative and profoundly meaningful for the people that go through it on both sides.
Myrna McCallum:
So I'm a huge fan of something called Blinkist. It's an app.
Vanessa Slater:
Blinkist?
Myrna McCallum:
Yeah, Blinkist. And I listen to it all the time because I can't get somebody to do a deep dive into what a book is about in 20 minutes or less without me having to read the whole book. And I get to listen to it, so it's better than listening to the news. And so this morning I was listening to Blinkist and I was listening to a mom who's child was murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary. And she was talking about how she came home one day after she lost her son. She couldn't go home for a long time because everything in the house reminded her of him. Once she finally did go home, one of the first things she saw was a little piece of art he had created that was on the fridge and it said nurturing, healing and love.
And he was just learning how to write. So it was all just phonetically spelled. But she said she started to think about that and she started to think about the young man who killed all these children. And she began to think about, well, what is our responsibility to bring nurturing, healing and love into community beyond our families? And she went to the school and she wanted to talk to administrators to say, "Are we teaching our kids empathy? Because I'm sure had somebody love this child, talk him empathy, he would have never done this thing that he did. And I don't want my child to die in vain."
And so she started something called the Choose Love Movement, and it's a nonprofit and they go in and they educate schools and kids on lots of things. But she says what we really need is an education on managing our emotions, creating safety, building relationships, practicing self-awareness, having the courage to critically self-reflect and to ask for help when we're not doing all right. And I'm thinking she's talking about this in the context of little kids, but I'm like, "Lawyers too. Everybody too, adults too."
Vanessa Slater:
Absolutely.
Myrna McCallum:
And when I listen to you, Vanessa, I'm thinking it's the same thing when we talk about emotionally intelligent approaches to law or law and justice. It's the very same thing that we or ...
Vanessa Slater:
Absolutely
Myrna McCallum:
... police and judges need.
Vanessa Slater:
Absolutely. We all need to have that connection. We all need to see each other as really important parts of a whole.
Myrna McCallum:
Yeah. And I think that it's when we don't see each other, that's when dehumanizing experiences occur. That's when people feel demoralized and disrespected, unseen, unheard.
Vanessa Slater:
Oh yeah. We have an epidemic of othering happening right now. We like to think we're immune from it here in Canada, but we're not. It's happening here. And people are becoming increasingly disenfranchised. Absolutely. And so working on those connections and remaining present and being able to have difficult conversations with people we might not always agree with is more important than ever. Of course, we've got to keep our heads together and be kind to each other. And working in the legal profession is one of the most punishing professions that people choose to go into.
Not only because of the hours, but because of the evidence and the trauma that legal professionals have been exposed to. You've talked about that extensively. It can be a dangerous place to be for people. And so the other part that has got to happen within legal training institutions is how to protect and how to look after that, what burnout looks like, what compassion fatigue looks like. The rates of substance abuse among lawyers is quite high. I'm sure you've seen that.
Myrna McCallum:
For sure.
Vanessa Slater:
That's the other piece that has to be promoted is that self-care. And we hear the word self-care all the time. I think people are kind of buzzed out listening to that term self-care. Maybe we need to come up with another term for it.
Myrna McCallum:
Oh, I think I'm way ahead of you, Vanessa. I don't really talk a lot about self-care because I'm not a huge fan of how it's been ...
Vanessa Slater:
Yeah. No, I know. Me neither.
Myrna McCallum:
A lot of people think of it as taking a bath and having some chocolate.
Vanessa Slater:
I know.
Myrna McCallum:
And I'm like, "No, no, no." But I move away from the conversation of self-care and I talk about collective care.
Vanessa Slater:
Yeah.
Myrna McCallum:
What is our obligation to each other?
Vanessa Slater:
Right. And there we are back to all my relations, is checking in.
Myrna McCallum:
Exactly. Exactly. So I am totally in gratitude to my Metis and Cree ancestors because I'm sure all of that is coming from them.
Vanessa Slater:
Absolutely.
Myrna McCallum:
But I invite lawyers and judges and others to explore how are you connecting with your peers? How do you make space to acknowledge the traumatizing impacts or the occupational psychological harms that are very likely to arise in the execution of your duties?
Vanessa Slater:
I saw an interesting article the other day about a judge who was making recommendations that instead of seeing photographic and video evidence, that it simply be described on paper. Did you see that?
Myrna McCallum:
I don't know. I've seen a couple. You should send it to me in case I haven't seen it.
Vanessa Slater:
Sure, yeah.
Myrna McCallum:
I saw a judge out in America write an article around how he was experiencing I think burnout and vicarious trauma, he said, and that was great that he disclosed that because we don't have enough people actually disclosing.
Vanessa Slater:
Yes.
Myrna McCallum:
But what he did then was he then gone into or talk about how he essentially pulled himself up by his bootstraps, started practicing self care, going to the gym, doing this, doing that. And that's all great for him if that works for him. But I think one of the problems with that sort of mindset or that message is that you're on your own. It's up to you to figure it out for yourself. And what I know from people who've experienced addictions and really harmful coping mechanisms is they can't do it on their own. They need help, they need connection, they need community. And I think we got to normalize that.
Vanessa Slater:
The notion of self-care, a manicure in a bath is also such a privileged thing. Not everyone can do that.
Myrna McCallum:
It's true.
Vanessa Slater:
And it's a bandaid and that's certainly not what I want to do.
Myrna McCallum:
I think it's hard work. I think self real self care is hard work. It means self reflection, self critique, talking to a therapist maybe to figure out what's going on. Boundaries into your workplace, practicing identifying your own triggers. It's all courageous. It requires courage when we talk about that.
Vanessa Slater:
Right. So when you were coming up through law school, did you learn anything about boundaries?
Myrna McCallum:
No.
Vanessa Slater:
Nothing, nothing.
Myrna McCallum:
God no. If any of our listeners have listened to my conversation recently with Amar Dhall, you know I had no knowledge of boundaries. I betrayed myself constantly. And it was only in getting educated, learning, going to therapy, reading, self reflection, self critique that I was like, "Oh, this is why this is important and this is why I need to practice in this way." But I think we need that education.
Vanessa Slater:
Oh, absolutely. And I think there are a lot of people out there who can provide it and who can start to change curriculum and to change those professional development points that are required. This is, I think where lawyering is really going to start changing hopefully soon. And I do think there's an appetite for it. People that I've spoken to recently are really curious about it because they do have stories and they do have cases that haunt them and they don't know where to put that.
Myrna McCallum:
So let me ask you this question, just coming full circle and in closing our conversation, we started off talking about how a lot of the folks who come into the system, they experience trauma probably before the age of 10 years old. What, if anything, do you want police officers, lawyers, judges, others to understand, not just about that, but not just understand it I guess, but to reflect that reality? What could they do to reflect? Is it a statement, is it a recognition? Is it bringing in more trauma experts to give evidence to just create a baseline that those trauma operating in that space? What do you think?
Vanessa Slater:
I think it's all of those things, but I think it's also those people, and most of them are amazing, who go into the frontline work, whatever that is, need to ask themselves why are they there? What space do they want to hold? What change do they want to support? What kind of people do they want to support? Especially with law enforcement, I would argue and really ask themselves. And that's where that critical self examination has to come in, why am I here? How am I going to move the needle in the right direction as opposed to just status quo or even worse, making situations worse.
And that question that Gabor Mate poses to people simply, what happened to you? Can you tell me where you're coming from? What did your childhood look like? What was after school for you? And I'm not saying that when police arrest someone who's done something, they're going to be saying that obviously, but when it's appropriate, when it's safe, when there's confidentiality, when there's space. And that's something Dan Jones talked about extensively, is making that space where those conversations can happen. And if people get creative about it, lawyers, judges, police officers, CIS workers, teachers, administrators, you can find that space. If there's an intention, you can make that space to ask those questions and start to work on connection.
Myrna McCallum:
And I love that. That's a good one, Vanessa. I think to leave folks with, if anything you take away from this conversation, it ought to be that look at your processes, the systems within which you work, your approach to what you do and find space. Because there is space there to ask the question, what happened to you?
Vanessa Slater:
Yeah. It's a great place to start.
Myrna McCallum:
Love that. Love that. Awesome. Okay, well this has been an awesome conversation. Thank you, Vanessa. For folks who are listening to this conversation and you're like, "Oh my God, who's this Vanessa, and what is this paper that she wrote? And I want to learn more." And if you're a restorative justice practitioner or a mediator who is looking at approaching your work in a more broader way, bring additional lenses to what you do, you can always register for the Trauma-Informed Justice course, which is coming up July 20th. Vanessa's speaking. She's one of our last speakers on day three, July 22nd. And a lot of the data and info she's bringing is really inspired by the paper that she wrote by the same name. So I hope to see you there. Thank you, Vanessa, for making time for the Trauma-Informed Lawyer podcast.
Vanessa Slater:
My pleasure. It's great to chat with you Myrna, and I look forward to seeing you in July.
Myrna McCallum:
Well, that's my show for today, everybody. I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Vanessa. For those of you who only know a little bit about restorative justice, I hope it inspires you to go learn a little bit more. For those of you who are well versed in it, I really hope that you took some positive takeaways from this conversation. Thank you so much for supporting this podcast, for listening to me, for coming back time and time again, sharing my podcast with others.
If you have feedback for me, you can reach me on Twitter, @thetilpodcast, also on Instagram @thetraumainformedlawyer and LinkedIn under my name or the Trauma-Informed Lawyer. If you love this podcast like I know you do, please leave me a rating in review on Apple Podcast as well as Spotify. Until next time, take care everyone.
This episode was recorded on the traditional unseated and ancestral territory of the Squamish, Slavey, [inaudible 00:52:55] and Muskowekwan people.