Two weeks ago, the Vancouver City Council voted unanimously to support a bill to start a process of defunding the Vancouver Police Department. A few weeks before that, Vancouver Pride Society voted to remove police entirely from pride. These things, of course, come in the wake of the murder of George Floyd by police and a multi-national, Black-led uprising against police brutality, which here in BC builds on the blockades in support of Wet’ suwet’ en sovereignty earlier this year. It’s clear that we’re at a cultural tipping point in our relationship to policing, and here at WAVAW, we need to make our position as an anti-violence organization clear. We support defunding the police and re-allocating funding to community resources.

We also want to acknowledge that working to improve the criminal justice system for survivors has had a limited impact. For 38 years, WAVAW has worked in partnership with the police and the legal system to improve the criminal legal system for survivors of sexualized violence, and we have seen some success. Still, we need to specify that efforts to reform the criminal justice system have mostly benefited only the survivors benefiting from white, cisgender, heterosexual, and class privilege.

This year, we will be releasing the results of our Justice Project, through which we interviewed survivors over three years about their experiences with the criminal justice system. The intention of this research project was to find ways to enhance survivors’ confidence in the justice system. However, our findings demonstrated that survivors experienced negative treatment and poor characterization while using the system, and they want and need accountability from systems personnel, and autonomy over their interactions with the system. Because of these structural flaws, many survivors didn’t see ways that the justice system could be improved. Instead, they longed for more options on how to seek Justice.

Most survivors who engaged with the criminal justice system were disappointed at best, and further harmed at worst. Survivors who had turned to criminal justice for help reported feeling discounted, ignored, and cast aside by the system. They told us that the process was long, costly and that they routinely felt like they were the one on trial.
Most survivors do not report sexual assault because they do not have faith that anyone will believe them, or that healing or justice will come of the process. Less than 1% of reports turn into conviction, and when they do, the criminal justice system is more focused on what will happen to the person who caused harm than supporting the survivor.

So why do we still think of police as a solution to sexual assault?

We in the feminist sector have some deep thinking to do around carceral feminism; which is the idea that harsher punishments and more imprisonment will reduce sexual violence. We know that incarceration damages community and contributes to cycles of violence, and we need to move away from expecting the same systems that cause harm to end it. In Canada, police have a long history as the strong arm of colonization, and continuing to invest in police – both financially and in advocacy as feminists – is setting the stage for more cycles of violence. As Audre Lorde said, “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house”.

When we talk about supporting survivors, we can’t forget about incarcerated survivors. We know that because of discrimination and the criminalization of poverty, Indigenous, racialized, and trans people are over-represented in prisons, where sexual violence is rampant and often committed by people in authority, like guards. Listening to these survivors means pushing back against the criminal justice system that has failed them, from criminalizing their survival to perpetuating sexual violence in prisons.

Navigating criminal justice is a big part of the work we do at WAVAW. We assure survivors that they deserve justice, their choice on what systems to access after an assault is integral, and that we will be with them every step of the way.

The only real justice is to end rape culture and the intersecting systems of oppression that cause it. In the meantime, we will stand with survivors as they navigate imperfect options. Divesting from carceral feminism is not an issue of individual survivor’s choices, but rather, what we as a movement continue to put our energy and advocacy into. Sexual assault is what happens when survivors’ autonomy is violated, so we will never further violate autonomy by telling survivors what to do and what their healing should look like.

What we will do, is advocate for more options for survivors. When going to the police is the only route towards justice available, ‘choice’ becomes an ambiguous term. Survivors deserve a real choice in their paths to justice and agency at every step.

We will also continue to speak the truth about the harms we know are caused by police and the criminal justice system, for both individuals and communities. This is what it means to go further than ‘including’ equity-seeking groups, like trans people and racialized people, but instead clearing the way for their vision of what a feminist rape crisis center is.

When we speak about defunding the police, we’re talking about re-investing in community solutions that are accountable and supportive of survivors, like family and domestic violence shelters, rape crisis centers, mental health counseling and sexual violence prevention education programs. We’re talking about taking a part of the 1/5th of the City of Vancouver’s budget that currently goes to the VPD, and giving it back to the people it was meant to serve. We mean re-thinking justice with survivors in mind, breaking cycles of violence, and preventing violence before it happens.

We know that big, bold changes like this can feel daunting, but we are capable of incredible growth and transformation. Policing, and the criminal justice system have continuously failed the people that it needs to be supporting. Policing doesn’t provide justice, and in many cases, further enacts harm. So let’s do something different. Let’s invest in community. Let’s address the root causes of harm. Let’s stop the criminalization of poverty. Let’s transform justice. And together, let’s create a future free from violence.