The Impact of the IRCA™ : Dismantling Systemic Blind Spots
Sharmarke Dualeh
Justice without context is injustice.
The Impact of Race and Cultural Assessment( IRCA™) is a formal report used in the Canadian judicial system — especially in criminal and family court contexts — to help judges, lawyers, and other justice professionals understand how systemic anti-Black racism, cultural identity, and lived experience have shaped an individual’s circumstances and interactions with the justice system.
The Impact of Race and Culture Assessment (IRCA™)—or what Sankofa Psychotherapy terms the Sankofa Cultural Assessment Report (SCAR)—is a critical tool for systemic accountability. It highlights how race, culture, and social context shape an individual’s life experiences and their interactions with the justice system.
The Sankofa Cultural Assessment Report ( S.C.A.R) pays respect to the IRCA™ and what has perpetuated in the judicial system since 2014. SCAR embodies the lived experience of the African Diasporic community within the Canadian context- Highlighting the complex and nuisanced harms faced by members of our community.
IRCA™ challenges the 'one-size-fits-all' approach that too often defines legal and psychological evaluations. It ensures that judges, lawyers, and policymakers see beyond behaviour to understand structural inequities—poverty, racism, trauma, and cultural displacement—that shape outcomes.
At a systemic level, these assessments invite justice systems to move from punishment to understanding, from bias to balance. They are not just reports—they are instruments of truth-telling and transformation.
Reach out to us to learn about SCAR/IRCA™ and how culturally informed evaluations can shift the narrative from judgment to justice. When systems begin to see people within their full human and cultural context, real equity becomes possible.