Design and Delivery – Funding to Support CJCs
The CJC Initiative’s design provided the necessary flexibility to support the pilot CJCs and the exploration of the CJC approach in other jurisdictions. The design and implementation of the funded CJCs reflect best practices in the literature and generated insights to inform the development of a framework for a potential national CJC program.
Design and Delivery of the Initiative
The Initiative is well-designed to support the exploration of the CJC concept and has the necessary flexibility to support the pilot CJCs in addressing emerging needs.
Exploration of CJC concept
Key informants identified the Initiative’s structure as a major positive feature in promoting the exploration of the CJC concept. The two tiers of funding – pilot CJCs and community engagement sessions – enabled more jurisdictions to be part of the process of testing and exploring the concept of CJCs. The Ad Hoc Committee then served as a forum where all jurisdictions could share information, including successes and challenges.
Importance of flexibility
The CJCInitiative, like the CJCs themselves, had flexibility as a core feature. Each CJC was expected to develop its own model that addressed the needs of the community(ies) it serves, including responding to emerging issues identified through ongoing community consultations.
- To address emerging or newly identified needs, recipients could request that funding be reallocated among approved categories. In that way, the Initiative facilitated the development of CJCs that were responsive to the community and supported building new partnerships.
- The Initiative also had the flexibility to accommodate funding recipients that were at different stages of implementation. For example, pilots at an early stage of implementation could use the funding for feasibility studies, while for CJCs that were already operating, the funding could support expansion or enhancements of services and/or partnerships.
“It has felt like this approach [the Initiative] has recognized that if we are genuinely going to be working with [the] community in different ways and building those outputs, there also has to be some flexibility in funding.”
-- Key informant
Models of CJCs
The Initiative has funded three distinct CJC models with further variations within each model. In so doing, the Initiative has broadened the types of innovations explored that can help inform efforts to design a framework for a national CJC program and guide the development of CJCs.
The CJC models differ because each was developed to address the needs and priorities identified within its community. Broadly, all models have a focus on providing wrap-around, trauma-informed supports to address root causes of crime and break the cycle of offending.
The funded CJCs fit into three main types of models:
- Integrated justice-social services: Ontario CJCs follow the more common CJC model, using a collaborative, multi-disciplinary community-based approach that involves co-locating and fully integrating justice sector participants (Crown, Court, duty counsel) in partnership with social services and community organizations (including Indigenous-led, Black-led, survivor-led) to offer wrap-around supports for accused, victims, families and members of broader community.
- Legal clinic plus: The BC IJCs follows a model closer to a legal clinic, with staff counsel providing legal representation. In addition to counsel, the BC IJCs include resource support workers who help connect participants to wrap-around supports and Elders to assist with cultural supports.
- Navigation: MKO’s Justice Navigation Hub and the MMF CJC have navigators that assist with providing information to participants and connecting them to relevant services to provide wrap-around supports. Both are housed in Indigenous entities that offer other relevant services that participants can be referred to.
Design and Delivery of CJCs
The funded CJCs and provincial and territorial community engagement sessions incorporated community needs and priorities, justice system challenges, and social support needs in their planning and implementation.
Nature of the community consultations in designing CJCs
Key informants emphasized the importance of community consultations in designing the CJCs. While consultations varied by CJC/IJC in terms of the approach, all CJCs/IJCs engaged with local service providers and community members, including individuals with lived experience and/or their family.
The BC IJCs engaged directly with elected Indigenous leadership in the community and, where appropriate, hereditary chiefs. Community consultations were also undertaken with local service providers and community members, including individuals with lived experience and/or their family. For the initial IJCs, these consultations occurred before receiving federal funding through the Initiative.
ON MAG conducted needs assessments or reviews for each community before the receipt of federal funding through the Initiative. The needs assessments or reviews included research into the demographic, environmental, and social services ecosystem and consultations with a wide range of community members. The Initiative funding supported a needs assessment for a fifth site in Barrie.
The MB CJCs mainly relied on existing consultative processes with their communities (MKO) or citizens (MMF).
Ongoing community engagement for CJCs
After the initial design of each CJC, ongoing community engagement ensures that the CJCs/IJCs continue to respond to community priorities, issues, and needs.
Currently, the BCFNJC has an IJC Services Steering Committee that provides ongoing guidance to its work related to the IJCs. There are plans to develop Community Advisory Circles for each IJC that will have membership appropriate to each community.
In Ontario, each CJC has a working group or steering committee that was involved in its development and continues to guide its operations. These advisory bodies are primarily comprised of community partners that are involved directly in the CJCs’ operations.
MKO and MMF continue to rely on broader regular consultations with the communities they serve to inform the operations of their respective CJCs.
Incorporating community needs and priorities
Examples of the incorporation of community needs and priorities
For the BC IJCs, two of the main issues identified through engagement activities were the overrepresentation of Indigenous people in the criminal justice system and the lack of access to lawyers. The BC IJCs address both issues by providing a welcoming space with staff who largely reflect the community, as well as offering or referring to culturally appropriate legal services and other wrap-around supports.
The Manitoba CJCs focus on offering services that are welcoming to First Nations (MKO) and Red River Métis (MMF) people, by having navigators from the community provide information and referrals. The MKO Justice Navigation Hub provides services to First Nations communities in northern Manitoba. The Red River Métis CJC utilizes MMF’s governance structure to provide a distinctions-based approach to address the unique needs of Red River Métis people.
In Ontario, each CJC is aligned with the community needs assessment or needs review that was conducted and the participatory design process. The TNW is provided as an example of how the work undertaken during the design process enabled the CJC to incorporate identified community needs and priorities.
Case study example: Toronto Northwest Justice Centre (TNW)
The TNW needs review highlighted important considerations for its design. The community faces gun and community violence, particularly among youth and young adults. It also has a high proportion of visible minorities, especially those who self-identify as Black, and includes youth in conflict with the law whose needs are not being met. Following the needs review, a participatory design process with extensive community engagement was undertaken to help ensure the model was shaped by real needs and expert input.
The design and operations of the CJC align with identified community needs. The TNW serves youth ages 12-17, including Black and racialized youth, offering culturally appropriate services. Its approach aims to address needs by considering the intersection of ethnicity, age, poverty, and criminal justice system involvement. The core team of the CJC also includes a child and adolescent forensic psychiatrist and education advocates. These team members aim to address some of the pressing needs of youth, such as lack of attachment to school and mental health concerns. The TNW partners with community organizations that provide tailored supports to help Black youth.
Provincial and territorial community engagement sessions
The provincial and territorial engagement sessions heard from a broad range of participants and solicited information as to the justice challenges and social support needs in their communities that a CJC might address. Attendees included representatives of populations that CJCs would likely serve and stakeholders who would likely be involved with the CJC in a direct or indirect way. Examples include Indigenous stakeholders, such as community-based and government organizations, Elders, and individuals with lived experience; service providers; and justice professionals.
Common findings of the provincial and territorial community engagement sessions identified community needs that align with the objectives of the CJC Initiative and the CJC model.
- To address the root causes of crime, integrated wrap-around services that include justice, health, and social services are needed.
- Services and programs need to be culturally appropriate and community-based organizations or First Nations governments/organizations need to lead the work, particularly in terms of design and operational framework.
- The ways to address criminal activity need to be person-centred and trauma-informed.
Best practices and challenges from the CJC pilots
The experiences of the CJCpilots highlight best practices and challenges that can guide the development of future CJCs, such as the importance of the planning phase, the use of cross-disciplinary teams, wrap-around supports, and ongoing community engagement.
Most of the best practices for the CJCs/IJCs have at their core the development of relationships with other service organizations and stakeholders, the broader community, and, perhaps most importantly, with participants. The literature on CJCs also raised many of the same best practices and challenges as were identified through interviews, case studies, and in the pilot CJCs’ performance reports. For challenges, factors such as location in small communities in rural, remote, or northern areas and lack or insufficient services needed for wrap-around supports played a larger role.
The importance of the planning and design phase
The literature emphasizes the importance of the planning and design phase of CJCs, noting as a best practice that sufficient resources should be given to ensure that the process is not hurried and includes a wide range of community members, not just community leaders (Berman, 2010; Lee et al., 2013; Wade, 2024). As described earlier in this report, the CJCs/IJCs had consultative processes that included many different community stakeholder groups so that identified needs and priorities would be incorporated in the CJC design.
Both the literature and the interview findings indicate that the planning and design process can be expensive and take time, but that the process pays a longer-term dividend by helping build the necessary collaborative relationships and buy-in from community and justice stakeholders.
Ongoing community consultations and engagement
Ongoing community consultation and engagement are a core feature of the CJCs and the community justice movement. Therefore, a best practice is a “strong commitment to the principle of community justice [and] intensive community consultation and continuous community involvement” (Wade, 2024, p. 10).
For all the CJCs/IJCs, maintaining regular communication and collaboration with partner organizations is a best practice. This involves staying in touch, sharing information, and recognizing the need to consider partner organizations’ priorities too. As a result of communications with their community and partner organizations, several CJCs/IJCs provide supports in other areas of the law. For example, the Chilliwack IJC conducts monthly legal clinics to offer summary advice in legal areas, such as family, wills and estates, and landlord-tenant. The ON CJCs’ case management teams provide non-legal support to participants who have other legal issues in addition to their criminal matters, such as child protection (TNW and Kenora) and landlord-tenant matters (DTE, TNW, London).
Best practices and challenges from the CJC pilots
Cross-disciplinary teams
A best practice from the literature is having an appropriate staffing complement that aligns with identified needs and priorities, which often involves cross-disciplinary teams that can help address root causes of crime.
The IJCs and ON CJCs have cross-disciplinary teams that include justice professionals and staff that provide social service supports and/or referrals. Most IJCs have a staff lawyer and a resource and support worker who provides referrals to relevant resources. Each ON CJC has teams constructed to meet identified community needs, but all involve justice representatives (Crown, Court, duty counsel) and community organizations that provide case managers and other services. The Manitoba CJCs do not have cross-disciplinary teams that include justice professionals. However, the navigators work to identify organizations in various sectors and disciplines to which participants can be referred.
Case study example: Toronto Downtown East Justice Centre (DTE)
The core team at the DTE includes two ON MAG employees: the Lead Crown, who screens potential participants for eligibility and handles the prosecution of the charges, and the Case Management Coordinator who assists the Lead Crown. In addition, community case managers connect participants to relevant community resources and support them in court at one of the satellite offices of the DTE. The community case managers are from the Jean Tweed Centre for Women (women and families dealing with addictions and mental health issues); Surrey Place (specializes in developmental and intellectual disabilities and traumatic or acquired brain injuries); LOFT (specializes in mental health, addictions, and housing); Regent Park Community Health Centre (primary health needs); and Streets to Homes (housing). In addition to these core community partners, the DTE has justice partners, specifically judges with the Ontario Court of Justice, who handle the virtual DTE cases one day a week. There are also dedicated duty counsel for the DTE who provide legal advice to participants.
In addition, multiple case managers have lived experience, as well as expertise in mental health, addictions, and developmental disability, which reflects some of the identified needs for this community.
Building relationships with participants and using trauma-informed approaches
“What I’m noticing is that if a client trusts you and they open up, you’re able to refer them to other services and that is more effective in providing in-depth resolutions because I can give that information to the Crown…The end result for the client [is] that they received trauma-informed services.”
-- Key informant
All the CJC/IJCs identified their ability to build trusting relationships with participants as a best practice.
IJCs use a “relational, trauma-informed approach” to providing services. This approach recognizes that many clients come to the IJC with past experiences of racism, poverty, trauma, and a variety of systemic barriers that make them hesitate to access available services. The IJCs use staff and counsel that are representative of the community (whenever possible).
The ON CJCs build trust with clients as part of a trauma- informed approach through community-led case managers with lived experience and continuity of the team that works with the participant – that includes, to the extent possible, the community case manager, Crown, judge, and duty counsel. The justice professionals and service providers work together to support participants. This approach contrasts with the adversarial nature of the traditional criminal court that is not necessarily equipped to address the complex social determinants of health for this population.
Case study example: Chilliwack IJC
The Chilliwack IJC team works together to help reduce barriers to accessing services and to build trust with participants. To help participants feel comfortable and safe, continuity is maintained in the intake process so that the individual does not have to repeat their story multiple times. Lawyers at the IJC use a trauma-informed approach to providing legal services. The initial consultation focusses on building trust, which in turn, can help support earlier and better outcomes. During this consultation, the lawyer takes time to make a personal connection and get to know the participant in addition to hearing about their legal issue and potential Gladue factors.Footnote 3 The resource and support worker, the office administrator, and lawyer work as a team to provide referrals to both legal or non-legal services. In some cases, staff will accompany a participant to these referrals, if requested.
The MKO and MMF CJCs build relationships by having navigators from the community (First Nations, Métis) who work with participants to connect them, wherever possible, to culturally relevant services.
Provision of individualized wrap-around supports
“Intentionality is the key piece here. Instead of it being a direct pathway that everybody just gets shunted into and catching people from a very broad place and funnelling everybody to the same path, we look at each individual with an individual plan and look at it as a human-centred model around justice. Each person’s personal trauma informs what restoration looks like.”
-- Key informant
The CJC/IJC models all provide individualized, tailored plans to connect participants with wrap-around supports to address participant needs and root causes of crime. Each model provides these supports in different ways with the level of collaboration among service providers varying from formal partnering agreements and co-location to more informal referral networks.
The IJCs depend upon their staff (lawyers, resource, and support workers) to determine what supports are needed for each individual during intake and subsequent consultations.
The ON CJCs physically co-locate and integrate justice, health, and social services. This is a best practice, as co-location provides more immediate access to services, creates more accountability on the part of participants, enables information sharing, facilitates collaboration, and makes case management easier (Kenyon et al., 2024; Mair & Millings, 2011; Wade, 2024).
For all ON CJCs, community case managers create individual plans that include the co-located services and other delivery partners to whom participants can be referred.
MB CJCs rely on services and programs within the MMF or MKO, with which they are co-located. The regional MMF office enables the Red River Métis CJC to have province-wide reach in serving participants and connecting them to MMF services and programs. Both MMF and MKO are also in the process of expanding their referral networks.
Creating a network of supports
As part of developing networks, key informants emphasized the importance of taking time to build relationships with delivery partners and service providers to whom referrals can be made. Maintaining these relationships with regular communications was also noted as essential.
A challenge in providing wrap-around supports for all the CJCs was the availability of some needed support services. This was more acute in CJCs in more rural or remote locations, although all CJCs experienced it for some services (e.g., housing, residential treatment for addictions).
Another challenge noted for IJCs/CJCs with smaller staff is the limited capacity to conduct outreach needed to develop and maintain referral networks.
Provision of culturally appropriate services
Part of providing relevant individualized, wrap-around supports is offering participants culturally appropriate services. All CJC models have undertaken a variety of proactive approaches to provide culturally appropriate services.
- Providing safe spaces for target populations: This can be done through the physical space and/or by the staffing of the CJC/IJC. For example, the IJCs’ staff are often Indigenous and most IJCs have Elders who offer support to participants and the IJC team a few days a week. The MB CJCs use navigators from their communities and regions. Another example is the Kenora CJC, which created a welcoming space featuring Indigenous art and a Healing Lounge for victims and survivors of crime, incorporating traditional Indigenous practices, medicines, and the presence of on-site Elders.
- Direct service provision: CJCs/IJCs provide culturally appropriate services that are trauma-informed, distinctions-based, and culturally and gender responsive. Prince Rupert IJC started a Wellbriety program that includes an Elder and Indigenous Healer to assist participants who have mental health, alcohol, and substance use issues; and the TNW refers Black youth to programs that offer culturally responsive mental health and substance use support and help them understand their identity.
- Referrals: All CJCs/IJCs reported referring participants to Indigenous and other cultural supports when relevant services are not provided in-house.
The IJC model example
IJCs focus on three core elements identified as priorities by Indigenous communities: culturally safe spaces, access to legal help and early resolution programs, and support services for healing and wellness. These elements may incorporate Indigenous culture, for example through art or traditional practices or medicines.
In addition, lawyers and outreach workers go beyond traditional roles, supporting participants in navigating complex systems and building community-based support plans. The model also advances the involvement of Indigenous Elders in the justice system, consistent with the recommendations of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples.
“Because the community we serve is Indigenous, we have Indigenous art all over the place, so it makes them feel like this is their place…it’s not a legal office, a Crown office, it is their space, and that’s what we want. We want to foster this idea, and when you provide an environment where they feel better about talking and communicating, they open up. We make them comfortable right away, and that’s what we want. We want this environment to feel safe and feel like they’re talking to their own people.”
-- Key informant
Logic Model and Performance Measurement
The CJC Initiative broadly falls within the scope of the Justice System Partnerships logic model; however, the model lacks sufficient detail to convey the Initiative’s structure and intended outcomes.
CJC Initiative alignment with logic model
As noted earlier, the Initiative is delivered through the JPIP. The JPIP, along with the Access to Justice in Both Official Languages Initiative, is included in Justice System Partnerships as part of the department’s program inventory. Therefore, the CJC Initiative is expected to be reflected in the Justice System Partnerships’ logic model.
Because the Justice System Partnerships logic model covers separate programs with different delivery structures, stakeholders, and objectives, its outcomes are necessarily broad. The JPIP itself also consists of a multitude of components and initiatives that support partnerships, innovation, and program development. Its outcomes are also broad to demonstrate flexibility in supporting access to justice. This also means that JPIP level outcomes do not always fully reflect the unique objectives and impacts of individual initiatives such as the CJC.
Ultimately, the CJC Initiative activities align with the outputs and outcomes in the logic model but the model lacks the level of specificity to fully convey the Initiative's structure and intended outcomes.
Performance measurement
Key informants emphasized the importance of measuring outcomes in ways that reflect the distinctive attributes of CJCs and their impact on participants and communities. Given the diverse and complex needs of participants, it is critical to clearly define what constitutes success. Both key informants and the literature emphasize the need to focus not only on traditional measures of justice interventions (e.g., number of participants, number of referrals made, number of court appearances, recidivism) but to consider qualitative dimensions (e.g., perceptions of fairness of the process, effects on root causes such as health, housing, and poverty). Should the CJC Initiative continue, clear articulation of initiative-level outcomes and refining performance measures would be key to accurately reflecting its impact on participants, communities, and the justice system.
Performance reporting
Performance reporting required of funding recipients was generally considered reasonable. Challenges were noted with timeliness of reports due to factors such as staff turnover. However, while reporting can lag behind implementation, the discussions in the Ad Hoc Committee helped fill gaps by providing more current qualitative information on promising practices and challenges.
- Date modified: