Stansfield died last week at 57, after six years of being treated for cancer. I interviewed him five times in the past three years and was always struck by his passion for justice and his desire that every person and every community have access to it. His desire to create the best justice system possible is now his legacy.
When he became chief judge in 2005, Stansfield brought a new feel to the office. We didn’t hear much from judges, never mind the top provincial court judge. Stansfield changed that, making himself available to media throughout the province. He was as happy to be interviewed by the Nanaimo Daily News as go on radio or TV.
As associate chief judge in the 1990s, he oversaw what became known as the criminal case flow management system. Lawyers, even some judges, grumbled about it, but Stansfield consulted widely in addition to drawing on his own experience in courthouses large and small in creating the system. Lawyers were concerned that the CCFM, as it came to be known, would alter their own case flow and cut into their billing. But Stansfield had anticipated that and was clear that the system actually created more flexibility, and that lawyers could make as much or more as under the old system.
When he first came to Nanaimo as chief judge in May 2006, Stansfield addressed a gathering of business people. He didn’t tell them what the justice system was going to do about drugs and crime, just when Victoria Crescent had seen the arrival of open drug use and dealing and the problems that went with that.
Stansfield turned the tables and invited them to join the justice system in finding a solution. I have to admit I was a little surprised, and happy, to hear that the chief judge had some good ideas about changing the perceptions of a failing justice system.
“We need to be integrating (the justice system) into communities in ways we never have before,” he said at the time. “We’re recognizing we can’t be that way, we have to open up the doors, literally and metaphorically.”
Stansfield was back in Nanaimo a month later speaking to city staff members, council members, police and Crown and defence lawyers in light of the drug plague that had invaded the downtown. Again Stansfield didn’t bring a message of stiffer sentences and harsher laws. He knew how those efforts not only fail, but compound criminality.
The most important piece, said Stansfield, was finding a way to help drug users.
“For some offenders, their lives are going to be served best by getting at their problems,” said Stansfield.
As he did with streamlining a convoluted court system designed for a past era, Stansfield went on to be the figure behind opening a drug court in Vancouver as well as the community court pilot programs. I remember his passion as he described to me the Red Hook Community Justice Centre in New York that he had visited.
If I understand Stansfield’s vision, it was for a justice system that reserved the adversarial process for serious crimes and diverted drug and mental health cases to the proper forums where they would be handled as health issues. Civil cases also needed to be moved into a realm where the courts were part of dispute resolution, not dictating a decision, he said. It’s sad Stansfield has been taken from us, but his passing will give all of us the opportunity to embrace his vision of creating a justice system that is effective as well as compassionate.
© Copyright (c) Canwest News Service
No one who met Hugh Stansfield, the late chief judge of the provincial court of B.C., could not be impressed with his vision.