On April 25th, 2025, Pivot, alongside the Prison Law Committee, prepared Joint UN Submissions on Systemic Racism Affecting Africans and People of African Descent in the Criminal (in)justice System. These submissions are endorsed by Prisoner’s with HIV/AIDS Support Action Network (PASAN), for the Report of the Independent Expert Mechanism to Advance Racial Justice and Equality in Law Enforcement.

Pivot argues that carceral punishment systems (i.e., prisons) and inhumane custody are not an appropriate response to the structural harms experienced in society, and by people of African descent. We argue that there is a clear nexus between the racially discriminatory outcomes and systemic racial discrimination that is reproduced in Canada’s prisons and the overincarceration and hypersecuritization of Black prisoners (i.e., higher securitization, racialized use of force, longer sentences, less opportunities for rehabilitation, etc.). Additionally, we argue that racial violence is endemic behind prison walls such that many Indigenous and people of African descent are forced to languish in restrictive prison conditions, shouldering isolation, excessive use of force from prison officers, and other cruel and inhumane conditions with little, if any, oversight or public scrutiny.

We urge the federal and provincial governments to consider the ways in which patterns of racial discrimination and exclusion keep Black, African, Caribbean and Afro-Indigenous communities locked away without access to appropriate rehabilitative and reintegration supports. Our core recommendations include:

(i) funding alternatives to prisons (such as CCRA ss. 4 & 81), including the use of healing lodges and community-determined healing justice modalities independent of CSC, or prison officer control;

(ii) develop decarceration strategies and alternative to prison systems in consultation with prisoners and formerly incarcerated Afro-Indigenous and people of African descent;

(iii) create an independent oversight body for provincial correctional facilities similar to the federal Office of the Correctional Investigator;

(iv) ensure that health care services are provided to Afro-Indigenous and people of African descent in prisons and implement measures to ensure independence and transparency in health care provision.

Read our Submission and Full Policy Recommendations here