2. Supporting Black Victims and Survivors of Crime

By Jane Evans and Bana Ammba

This article begins with an overview of victim services in Canada: the benefits they can provide and some key challenges they face. It then examines the unique experiences of Black victims and survivors of crime and the importance of culturally responsive services.Footnote 22 The article also presents gaps in research and data to help identify where more information is needed to support policy and program development for Black victims and survivors of crime.

Victim services in Canada

Victim services are designed to support individuals affected by crime, including victims’ emotional and practical needs, by providing information, assistance, and/or resources. Although victim services in Canada are primarily the responsibility of provinces and territories, federal departments and agencies also play a role, including in the areas of service and program delivery, policy development and implementation, and criminal law reform (Justice Canada 2024).

While the goals and principles of victim services programming are largely the same across Canada, the specific type and focus of programs and services varies across and within jurisdictions in response to specific needs, priorities, legislation, and available resources. The types of services may include:

Although there are generally four service delivery models, there may be differences in how they are delivered (Justice Canada 2024), including:

The type of victim services and whether they are available can also vary within communities depending on their size and location (urban, rural, northern, and remote areas). Varied funding sources also play a role in how the services differ. These include victim surcharges paid by offenders,Footnote 24 federal funding through the Federal Victims Strategy,Footnote 25 and how provinces and territories fund victim services (Justice Canada 2024).

Role of victim services

Victim services play an important role in helping to reduce the impact of crime (Johnston-Way & O’Sullivan 2016). This includes helping victims to reclaim their lives and to help them avoid developing issues such as addictions and health issues at the same time, all of which can have positive impacts on community well-being and safety (Johnston-Way & O’Sullivan 2016). Victims and survivors have also said that counselling, being supported emotionally, and being provided with information about the justice system are the most helpful services they have received (Prairie Research Associates Inc. 2006).

Victim services also support access to justice by providing information about the highly complex criminal justice system (McDonald & Scrim 2011). Witness support, such as testimonial aids,Footnote 26 and accompanying victims to court, can help provide them with the confidence to proceed with their case in court (Prairie Research Associates Inc. 2006). Testimonial aids are also believed to help with reducing systemic trauma, which victims and witnesses may experience while participating in the court process (Justice Canada 2021).

Challenges with victim services

However, victim services in Canada also face challenges that can impact access to justice for victims and survivors. The following provides an overview of some of the key challenges, then explores some that specifically impact Black victims and survivors.

Victimization and trauma

The trauma that victims may experience as a result of being harmed can play a significant role in their ability to access victim services (Justice Canada 2021). At the same time, unless the services themselves are trauma-informed, they can make victims’ experience of trauma worse (Justice Canada 2021).

Link between trust and access

Some victims and survivors may also hesitate to access services within or adjacent to the criminal justice system, especially if they mistrust the system. This can be a result of the ongoing impacts of colonization, racism, poverty, and marginalization. That can contribute to some communities, including Black, Indigenous, and racialized, being underserved (Justice Canada 2021). People who have been victimized also tend to have less confidence in police than those who have not, regardless of whether they reported the victimization (Cotter 2021).

Availability of services

There is a lack of services for victims and survivors across Canada. The number of available programs and staff is inadequate to meet the needs of victims. The gaps in rural and remote communities are even greater (Office of the Federal Ombudsman for Victims of Crime 2017; Justice Canada 2021; Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights 2022). Even when services are available, victims and survivors may not be aware of them.

A 2011 study showed that a significant number of Canadians (42 percent) were not aware that victim services existed and young adults (aged 18–24) had no knowledge of them at all (McDonald and Scrim 2011). There is a need to raise awareness about victim services, especially for those who have been victimized and for criminal justice professionals (Justice Canada 2021; Justice Canada 2026).

Service delivery models and funding

Most victim services are designed to support victims and survivors involved with the criminal justice system in the short term. However, many victims and survivors continue to need supports over a longer period (Office of the Federal Ombudsman for Victims of Crime 2017). This includes access to appropriate aftercare services (for example, services outside the formal criminal justice system that support healing, including counselling) (Justice Canada 2021).

Short-term funding models or services funded on a pilot basis raise issues about how sustainable these projects and services are (Justice Canada 2021). The issues include low pay, staff burnout, high staff turnover, and not enough resources to deliver specialized services. If funding for services is insufficient or unstable, organizations may not be able to deliver the services (Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights 2022).

Culturally safe and responsive services

Black, Indigenous, and racialized victims and survivors need culturally safe and responsive services. This has been reported as a barrier to these populations’ ability to access formal services. Instead, these victims and survivors pursue support through more informal mechanisms (for example, churches, peers, and other culturally appropriate services) (Sharpe et al. 2024; The Centre for Research & Innovation for Black Survivors of Homicide Victims 2022; Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights 2022; Justice Canada 2021). The next section will examine this further by looking at the experiences of Black victims and survivors.

Understanding the experience of Black victims and survivors of crime in Canada

Ongoing systemic anti-Black racism within Canadian institutions and policies, rooted in Canada’s colonial history, has led to a unique set of challenges for Black victims and survivors of crime.Footnote 27 Underfunding and general barriers to access (as outlined earlier in this article) affect victims and survivors from accessing services across the board, but systemic racism, cultural differences, community stigma, and socio-economic disparities create an added layer of complexity and structural barriers for members of Black communities (Owusu-Bempah and Jones 2023).

Distrust of law enforcement

Many Black victims distrust police and justice institutions. This is a significant barrier to seeking support. For example, Black people in Canada are more likely than non-racialized people to say that they experience bias in their interactions with police and to rate aspects of police performance poorly (Cotter 2022).

Black victims have also reported being treated as suspects rather than victims when seeking police assistance, because officers assumed they were offenders, not victims (Owusu-Bempah and Jones 2023; Duhaney 2022).

This distrust is shaped by Black victims’ and survivors’ long-standing experiences of racial profiling, over-policing, and being disproportionately criminalized. This has led Black victims and survivors being skeptical that reporting crimes will result in fair or supportive treatment (Royal Canadian Mounted Police 2023; Owusu-Bempah and Jones 2023; Jeffers 2023; Duhaney et. al 2022; Canadian Civil Liberties Association 2021). These factors collectively discourage Black victims and survivors from reporting being victimized, reduce access to services, which are often linked to police referrals, and contribute to Black people disengaging more broadly from the justice system. Ultimately, this can reinforce the deep reciprocal distrust between Black communities and the police.

Lack of culturally safe and responsive resources

Black victims and survivors of crime often encounter victim services that are not culturally safe or responsive to their lived experiences. Victim services may not have staff who reflect the racial and cultural diversity of the populations they serve. This can make it harder for Black victims to feel understood or supported (Office of the Federal Ombudsman for Victims of Crime 2024; Sharpe 2024; MacDougall et al. 2022). In many cases, the services also fail to integrate approaches that acknowledge the realities of anti-Black racism, racial trauma, and the historical mistrust between Black communities and justice institutions (Duhaney et. al 2025). Not feeling culturally safe can leave victims feeling alienated from or dismissed by the justice system. This makes it less likely that they will seek formal supports. It also reinforces their reliance on informal networks of family, faith communities, or grassroots organizations, which may not be equipped to support victims and survivors of crime (Sharpe et al. 2024).

Trauma-informed, culturally appropriate services, and cross-sector training are needed to ensure that interventions are grounded in racial realities and community contexts (The Centre for Research & Innovation for Black Survivors of Homicide Victims 2022). It is critical for Black victims and survivors of crime to be able to access these resources to foster trust and inclusion (Owusu-Bempah and Jones 2023).

Stigma as a barrier to support

While some victims and survivors of crime may fear that seeking help will expose them to stigma, gossip, or retaliation within their communities, Black victims and survivors are further impacted by systemic anti-Black racism. When they are concerned about stereotypes being reinforced or surveillance being heightened, combined with their lack of trust in justice institutions, Black victims and survivors may underreport the crime and instead rely on informal supports rather than the justice system (Duhaney et. al 2025; Sharpe et al. 2024; Maynard 2017). These informal networks often provide immediate emotional comfort, a sense of belonging, and nonjudgmental listening that may feel safer than engaging with mainstream victim services. However, there is also a need for formal victim’s services to prevent overburdening informal support systems (Sharpe et al. 2025).

Socio-economic disparities

Black communities often suffer financial insecurity because of systemic inequalities in employment opportunities and wealth distributionFootnote 28 (Clark 2025; Jeffers 2023). Despite Black people in Canada having higher levels of post-secondary education than the general population, Black adults and youth are more likely to live in low-income households and to experience food insecurity (Statistics Canada 2025; Clark 2025; Uppal 2023; Wall and Wood 2023).

These economic pressures mean that many Black families must work multiple jobs or long hours to make ends meet. This leaves little time, energy, or resources to seek victim services. For victims and survivors, the costs of transportation, childcare, or lost income from taking time off work can make support programs inaccessible. Poverty and underemployment often force Black youth and adults to prioritize survival over seeking help. This in turn makes them more vulnerable and deepens their mistrust in the systems that fail to meet their needs (Jeffers 2023).

Data and information gaps

There is a lack of disaggregated race-based data, which inhibits the ability to understand issues of access to services for Black victims and survivors (Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights 2022).

Early justice data practices largely avoided disaggregating statistics by race, partly due to concerns from minority communities that doing so could reinforce harmful stereotypes (Owusu-Bempah and Millar 2010). As a result, past national surveys, such as the General Social Survey – Canadians’ Safety,Footnote 29 have tended to use broad categories, such as “visible minorities,” which only draw distinctions between Indigenous peoples and racialized and non-racialized populations. Although this approach has helped highlight disparities between White and non-White populations, it has also obscured the diversity of experiences within racialized communities.

For example, victimization data are often reported for racialized populations as on group without further disaggregation for Black populations (for example, Black Caribbean, Black African, and Historic Black communities in Canada), South Asian, or East Asian individuals. This limits researchers’ ability to have a more nuanced understanding of how structural inequalities and differential treatment by police and courts affect specific communities.

The result of not having separate race-based data is that national statistics on systemic anti-Black practices, such as racial profiling, over-policing, and barriers to culturally safe victim services, are not made visible. More recently, advocates and researchers have called for race-based and disaggregated data to be collected to capture these distinctions (Statistics Canada 2024). However, the historical reliance on broad racialized group categories has resulted in a knowledge gap in the lived experiences of Black victims and survivors of crime.

Victim Services Directory

Justice Canada maintains a Victim Services Directory to help service providers, victims, and individuals locate services for victims of crime across Canada.Footnote 30 While the Directory was designed with several search functions,Footnote 31 it does not have the capacity to identify services that are specifically tailored for Black victims and survivors. To better understand what victim services and resources are currently available in Canada for Black victims and survivors of crime, Justice Canada worked with the community-based organization HOODFAMSFootnote 32 on an environmental scan in 2025. Although most of the victim services the scan identified were system-based, a few Black-led organizations also offer victim services.

While some of the providers in the justice system have tried to build capacity to provide more culturally safe services and spaces, barriers continue to exist for many Black victims and survivors as they are not accessing these services. Similar results were also found in a recent environmental scan of the availability and visibility of domestic violence services for Black women and Black communities (Duhaney, et. al. 2025).

Looking forward – areas for future research

Although these environmental scans were a first step towards identifying what resources and services may be available for Black victims and survivors, more research is needed.

Some possible areas for future research include:

References