Preface by Burt Galaway, President, John Howard Society of Canada Without literacy, there can be no justice. This theme, with variations, is consistently made by the judges who prepared materials for this compendium. Without literacy, defendants may not understand the proceedings against them or the conditions to which they have agreed for release. Witnesses may not be able to test the veracity of their statements written by others. The processes of justice become ritualistic and carry little meaning or significance to defendants, witnesses and jurors if one does not understand. Embarrassment about low literacy and the tendency to deny the existence of literacy problems may conceal the problem. Unusual astuteness on the part of judges and other criminal justice officials is required to verify when the level of literacy is interfering with the person's ability to understand what is happening. For the past several years, the John Howard Societies across Canada have been promoting increased attention to questions of literacy in the criminal justice process; many societies have been offering programs to increase the level of literacy for offenders. This compendium, along with the companion piece Literacy and the Courts: Protecting the Right to Understand and the video Literacy and the Courts, are offered as tools to invite judges and other professionals involved in the administration of criminal law to consider the importance of literacy among persons who appear before our courts or are under the supervision of our corrections systems.

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