Sessions
Opening Greetings & Keynote
8:30 AM - 10:15 AM Mon
John Reilly sat as a judge for over 30 years. For the first half of his career he was a 'disciple of deterrence', and believed in the punitive justice system. In the second half of his career he saw the system failing the Indigenous people and made it a mission to improve the delivery of justice to them. He learned the basic difference in the Euro-centric and Indigenous concepts of justice was that the Euro-centric saw a wrongdoer as a bad person who required punishment, the indigenous saw a wrongdoing that was the result of ignorance in need of teaching or illness in need of healing. He became a convert to restorative justice, an advocate of its use and of better understanding between indigenous and non-indigenous people.
He has written three books that tell of his experience and his current critical view of the Canadian Criminal Justice system.