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Family Violence Initiative

Public Legal Education and Information

The Department of Justice Canada provides legal information to the Canadian public through its public legal education and information (PLEI) activities.

Under the Family Violence Initiative, PLEI activities are designed to support the development and delivery of public legal education and information to the Canadian public on family violence. PLEI activities also contribute to the prevention and reduction of family violence.

Activities

The PLEI activities of the Family Violence Initiative are intended to:

• identify the need for public information materials on family violence
• support the development of resources, such as fact sheets, brochures, training programs and workshops
• deliver public legal education and information on family violence issues by working with PLEI organizations across Canada
• evaluate education and information materials

The resources – and the results of the evaluations – are distributed and used by:

• organizations involved in public legal education and information across Canada
• Victim and witness assistance programs
• social service organizations
• criminal justice professionals
• women and children who have experienced, or are at risk of, experiencing violence
• members of the public

Some examples of resources

Two information booklets have been developed and distributed across Canada : Abuse is Wrong in Any Language and Stalking is a crime called criminal harassment.

• Abuse is Wrong in Any Language is a booklet for immigrant and refugee women on spousal abuse. It is available in 10 languages. These languages include:

  • English (HTML)
  • French (HTML)
  • Albanian (PDF 721K )
  • Chinese (PDF 816K )
  • Czech (PDF 1058K )
  • Hungarian (PDF 1050K )
  • Punjabi (PDF 722K )
  • Romanian (PDF 1089K )
  • Serbian (PDF 1032K )
  • Spanish (PDF 830K ),

  This booklet is also published in Braille. 

  An adaptation of the above booklet, called Abuse is Wrong in Any Culture, has also been published in three Inuit dialects and in English and French.

  Note: If you cannot access the PDF documents, please contact the Family Violence Initiative for help.

• Stalking is a crime called criminal harassment has been produced in five languages: English, French, Chinese, Punjabi, Spanish.

Evaluations

In 2000, the Department evaluated three information booklets on spousal abuse, peace bonds and criminal harassment. The evaluation report is entitled Review of Effectiveness of Department of Justice PLEI Publications Relating to Domestic Violence.

Public Legal Education and Information Publications

Justice Canada publishes its own PLEI materials. For more information, please see Family Violence Publications. Also, through its funding agreements with organizations involved in public legal education and information, the Department helps these organizations to develop relevant materials on various issues, including family violence. For more information on these organizations and their publications, please refer to Links to Other Family Violence Resources.