Province introduced permanent ban on street checks in October 2019
The Nova Scotia government has provided an update on its progress on addressing Dr. Scot Wortley’s report which included 53 recommendations covering the banning of street checks, regulating street checks, collecting data regarding police stops and improving police-community relations.
The Wortley Report, released in March 2019, provided 24 recommendations relating to the regulation of street checks, which have been addressed by the provincial government’s decision in October 2019 to prohibit street checks. Of the 29 remaining recommendations, Nova Scotia’s justice department leads the work to address 12 recommendations, four of which have been completed and eight of which are pending.
Regarding the recommendations for which the work has been completed, Nova Scotia’s justice minister has done the following:
The Wortley Report Research Committee comprises representatives from police, from African Nova Scotian Affairs, from the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission, from the justice department, from African Nova Scotian community organizations and African Nova Scotian community representatives from the Northern Region, Cape Breton Region and Southwest Region.
The committee seeks to assess the effects of the street check ban on community-police relations, to study race-based data collection models on police stops and to look into the creation of a permanent data collection system for recording information on civilian stops.
As regards the recommendations for which the efforts are underway, Nova Scotia’s justice department has been doing the following:
The justice department is also assisting with efforts regarding the report’s other recommendations, including by dedicating $100,000 to the support of law enforcement training for improving the police’s cultural competency in relation to ethics, accountability and racially-biased policing. The justice department will keep collaborating with stakeholders to address the pending recommendations.
