In sentencing a woman for impaired and dangerous driving, a visiting territorial court judge elaborated on his experience with aboriginal offenders and his preference for alternative punishments to jail time.

Judge Dennis Schmidt ordered Teri Lynn Schinkel serve a 60-day intermittent sentence, plus two years of probation, for an incident earlier this year during which she drove drunk around Whitehorse and struck another car, injuring its passenger.

The reason for the intermittency is so Schinkel, a third-generation residential school survivor, can continue with rehabilitation and caring for her child, Schmidt said in his Aug. 14 decision.

He takes care to focus on restoration when sentencing with aboriginal offenders, he said, after an enlightening experience he had in the B.C. island community of Alert Bay.

The local First Nation invited Schmidt to a meeting, at which 500 people spent the afternoon telling him about their history: how in the 1920s, their elders were imprisoned for wearing traditional dress, going to potlatches and using traditional canoes.

“I do not know if there were 500 people in that village, but they came from everywhere because they had been promised a chance to give their opinions to a judge,” Schmidt said.

“They said this has got to stop. The last judge here was sending our people to jail just like they did in the ’20s. I heard their grievances, and it changed me forever.”

Over the next six years, he said, he didn’t send another person to jail. Instead, he strived for rehabilitative or restorative sentences.

In Schinkel’s case, he weighed her history – a difficult childhood and familial alcohol and drug abuse – with the seriousness of her crime.

She was drinking at a house party last February when her ex-boyfriend assaulted her and left the party.

Because it was cold outside and he’d left without his coat, she decided to go find him and bring it to him.

“She knew she had drunk too much, and she had drunk quite a lot,” Schmidt said.

“There was absolutely no reason for her to leave that house party to take this coat to her ex-boyfriend. If it was cold, he would come back. She was very selfish in her decisions.”

Schinkel left the party in her car, and was spotted swerving violently on the road and striking another vehicle.

At some point, she came across her ex-boyfriend, who assaulted her again.

Schinkel said she was traumatized by this and took off in the car.

For a “considerable period of time,” she drove around the city recklessly, with one flat tire, at 130 to 140 kilometres an hour, in the wrong lane, ignoring stop signs and hitting medians.

As she drove down the hill into Whitehorse, Schinkel hit another car and pushed it off the road and over a bank. That car was totalled and its female passenger injured.

Then, when paramedics arrived, Schinkel was argumentative and difficult, thrashing around and kicking. At Whitehorse General Hospital, she had to be restrained.

She later pleaded guilty to impaired driving causing bodily harm, dangerous driving, and refusing a breathalyzer.

Schmidt called impaired driving “a curse on the community,” and said it required a deterrent and denunciatory sentence.

“There must be an expectation in the community that, for this kind of driving under these kinds of circumstances – hurtling two tonnes of metal down a hill at these kinds of speeds, drunk, and unable to keep your car on the road – there will be a response and it will not be: ‘That’s good, do better next time, you have obviously been traumatized by what happened here and by your conduct.’ It has to be more than that.”

But he acknowledged that Schinkel said the accident was a turning point for her.

She said she is living the same alcohol- and drug-addicted lifestyle she’s seen in her own family, and it has traumatized her.

She wants to reform and care for her child properly.

Schmidt also referred to an oft-cited 1999 Supreme Court of Canada decision known as Gladue, which states that, due to the disproportionate number of aboriginal people behind bars and the historic treatment of aboriginal people, jail time for these offenders should be avoided when there’s a reasonable alternative.

He handed down 60 days, to be served intermittently, plus two years’ probation.

Schinkel is banned from driving for one year, and is not to consume alcohol or drugs not prescribed by a doctor.