The Black LGBTQ Justice-Affirming Assessment (BLGBTQJAA) Certification

Montreal

November 10-13, 2026
5:00 PM - 9:00 PM

SHIFT (Concordia) Centre for Social Transformation
Room LB-145, J.W. McConnell Building
1400 De Maisonneuve Boulevard West
Montreal, Quebec H3G 1M8

Program Description

The Black LGBTQ Justice-Affirming Assessment (BLGBTQJAA) Certification is a specialized 12-hour microcredential delivered over four days and offered twice annually. The program equips practitioners with the theoretical, legal, and practice-based foundations required to conduct justice-affirming assessments. Accredited by the Law Society of Ontario for EDI Professionalism Credit and supported by the Department of Justice Canada and the Law Foundation of Ontario, the certification moves beyond a singular focus on race or culture to examine how intersecting systems of oppression and discrimination shape the lived experiences of Black LGBTQ people within institutional contexts.

Drawing upon Black LGBTQ scholarship, critical race theory, intersectionality, equality jurisprudence, and Canadian legal frameworks, participants engage in advanced assessment writing, interviewing and communication strategies, community-informed approaches, and experiential learning. Graduates develop the capacity to prepare intersectional, multidisciplinary enhanced alternative measures, diversion, and pre-sentence reports that contextualize the experiences of Black LGBTQ justice-impacted individuals and their encounters with public and private institutions.

By advancing Black LGBTQ-affirming, evidence-informed, and justice-oriented assessment practices, the certification contributes to substantive equality across Canadian institutions and systems.

Program Outcomes

Address gaps in legal analysis concerning anti-Black racism, pan-Blackness, and intersectional discrimination affecting justice-impacted Black LGBTQ individuals.
Produce, as part of a multidisciplinary assessment team, court-ready reports that address the unique experiences and needs of justice-impacted Black LGBTQ individuals.
Apply an intersectional analysis of Black cisheteronormativity, heterogenderism, sexuality, gender identity, homophobia, transphobia, and structural discrimination within the criminal legal system.
Contextualize alternative measures, diversion, and sentencing through an intersectional analysis of anti- Black homophobia, transphobia, misogynoir, racism, over-policing, overrepresentation in custody, and mental health stigma.
Provide judges with evidence-based, trauma-informed, and community-validated analyses to support fair alternative measures and diversion from incarceration.
Join the Black LGBTQ Justice Canada Affirming Assessment Roster of Experts and serve its beneficiaries for a minimum of two years.

Who are Black LGBTQ Justice-Affirming Assessment
(BLGBTQJAA) Experts?

A multidisciplinary team of specialized practitioners from clinical and non clinical fields (e.g., psychiatry, psychology, family medicine, social work, criminology, law, and community advocacy) will provide Black LGBTQ-affirming enhanced assessments, reports, and letters. Employing a Black LGBTQ Justice Affirming Intersectionality analysis (BLGBTQJAI), experts will examine the intersectionality of how BLGBTQ justice issues affect people at the intersections of race, sexuality, and gender identity, recognizing that problems and solutions rarely arise within a single disciplinary domain. Black LGBTQ Justice Affirming Intersectionality (BLGBTQJAI) is a theoretical framework that examines how the meanings and categories of Black LGBTQ justice vary across social contexts. Its purpose is to capture the relational complexity of Black LGBTQ justice across multiple aspects of the criminal justice system and across analytical categories, rather than focusing on complexities confined to a single social group or a single category. Our work moves beyond a narrow focus on race and culture alone to document and analyze how multiple axes of exclusion and discrimination combine to impact blended social identities and an individual’s lived experience.

What Will They Do?

BLGBTQJAA experts will develop a nuanced understanding of Black LGBTQ Justice impacted individuals to produce intersectional multidisciplinary court-ready enhanced reports which will provide judges with evidence-based, trauma informed, and community validated context to support fair, proportionate outcomes. Essentially, Black LGBTQ-affirming enhanced justice impact reports address some of the gaps in analysis from lawyers on how they frame arguments as they relate to Black LGBTQ multiple discriminations and pan-Blackness to move beyond representation. Employing a Black LGBTQ Justice Affirming Intersectionality analysis (BLGBTQJAI) should be contextualized as seeking not to replace a focus on Black heterosexual and cisgender people’s experiences within the criminal justice system but to expand extant understandings of injustice by identifying the multiple and compounding marginalizations experienced by justice-impacted Black LGBTQ gender-nonconforming, gender-expansive, and nonbinary people.

BLGBTQJAA Course Materials & Outline

Detailed course materials and the complete outline will be shared directly with approved registrants on the first day of the program.

Minimum Baseline Qualifications for BLGBTQJAA

Advanced degree in criminology, social work, psychology, psychiatry, counselling, social and health sciences, law, a related field, or equivalent community based/professional experience with specialized training in critical race theory, intersectionality, and an understanding of how anti-Black racism manifests within the criminal justice system, alongside anti-racism and LGBTQ affirming practice.
Demonstrated expertise working with Black communities and LGBTQ+ communities in Canada.
Familiarity with enhanced pre-sentence reports, IRCAs, Gladue principles, Charter protections, and sentencing jurisprudence.
Training or knowledge in trauma-informed interviewing, risk-need-responsivity (RNR), and culturally responsive assessment.
Ability to critically interpret, articulate, and amplify the sociocultural and political realities of Black LGBTQ justice-impacted people’s lives, drawing on Black critical race, queer, and trans theories, criminal justice empirical research on Black communities (academic, community, and governmental), and professional expertise in the co-creation of enhanced intersectional pre-sentence reports.