Legal sentencing has been acknowledged to contribute from consideration of social context evidence uses and became seen as in need of assessment for relevant systemic and background constructs such as racial prejudice. Whereby hereinafter race is referred to as a social construction that is in such understanding obstacles neutrality of decision making due to such a broad social fabric that among everything else involves creation and maintenance of power imbalances that require awareness. Every upcoming societal generation is noted to inevitably be the social heir, continuation of the prior. People’s behavior is an occurrence that is an outcome of inner condition of a person that became transformed into an action toward socially significant objects. ¹

Not only education and employment, but legal sentencing raises the question of holistic approach. Canadian experience of racism as experienced by African Nova Scotians could differ from Black people’s experiences in other part of the country or across the boarder in broader North America. ² This requires thorough interpretation and reinterpretation to arrive at a common conception of ‘justice’ that receives its meaning based on its context, however, cannot be treated as an abstraction in a similar way that public good cannot be reduced to some abstract illusion.

Simultaneous is the consideration that reason must control emotion when it comes to sentencing decision making, and as in R v Morris (2021) case in which firearms related conviction was in question, consideration should be aligned to weighted facts and not values. As noted, sentence is not just about the crime but must also be about the offender due to seriousness of some crimes. In the cases of gun related crimes, crimes cause fear of gun violence and are a serious societal problem. While normative procedural legal violations are of significant variation to sentencing, lived experience cannot be unattended when addressing crime and criminal behavior in society. Furthermore, Justice Nakatsuru (R v Morris, 2021) set forth that such factors as ‘systemic’ and ‘background’ considerations do need to be taken into account ³ to genuinely speak of blameworthiness, as well as matters of deterrence and denunciation that are the elements of interpretation of role of incarceration and prisons. Hereby meaning inevitably some sort of measure to speak of morality, morality however being a complex endeavour. Reason based knowledge is limited to non-emotional reaction to particular circumstances, verity of values is noted very difficult to scientifically verify and perplexes generally politico-legal positivist neutrality since moral aspects of political process or otherwise societal organization, regulation and further judicial assessment do not find relevance of analysis. Simply speaking conception of justice is overruled by the focus on jus qua jussum, meaning focus on legal positivism. ⁴

Overall, there is an opinion that politics or rather governance should steer clear of morality setting, however considering that justice and just society presupposes distribution and redistribution of material good and even liberties there arises the need to view justice as firstly a political justice, politico-legal justice. Equality of citizen in form of the law.

Social context evidence calls upon rationalism and nonetheless distinguishes between natural and positive law of polis rooted society, reasonable nature and agreement-based origination of social character of political instruments and calls for the balanced interpretation with systemic and background factors not overstepping other relevant considerations in sentencing.

When it comes to government decision making or other such principles, inevitable is the question about legality of usage of the governance power to set forth and regulate such essential to people constructs as equality, justice, freedom and protection of people’s rights.

Black people do not contest biology in a similar way Black people do not have a different understanding of basic sense of justice when it comes to contestation of agreement on the concept of ‘justice’.

Legal creativity cannot not account for valid concerns that are in addition scientifically justified and not to disapprove lack of harm reduction in society. Impact of Race and Culture Assessment (IRCA) became developed to provide race and racism-related information and for that information to be readily available for consideration and to assure just trial in sentencing decisions. Examples of usage have been encountered in R v X (2014) ⁵, R v Jackson (2018), R v Anderson (2021), R v Morris (2021) and other cases. The court needed to take into consideration anti-Black racism in society, as well as affects of that racism on the person and contributions to understanding how crimes are committed, and people are criminalized.