North of 49: The Dynamics of Canadian Policing

Introduction

Canada has a number of unique features that distinguish it from other international jurisdictions, including its close neighbor the United States. In 2016, the country’s population was approximately 36.3 million spread over 9.98 million square kilometers (Statistics Canada, 2016). Canadian police agencies range from small Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) detachments in northern or remote regions of the country to large police services in urban centers – each charged with providing services to communities of various sizes across diverse geographic landscapes. Policing is carried out at four levels: federal, provincial, municipal, and First Nations. However, municipal police officers constitute two-thirds of the police personnel in the country. Within the framework of the First Nations Policing Program (FNPP), the federal, provincial and territorial governments, as well as First Nations communities, can negotiate agreements for police services that best meet the needs of First Nations communities – such as the creation of an autonomous, reserve-based police agency (Public Safety Canada, 2016).

Despite the agency for which an officer is employed in Canada, as the first point of contact with the criminal justice system, police encounters represent the gateway to the Canadian criminal justice system, and can significantly influence the behaviors, perceptions, and interpretations of citizens in any society (Bradford, Jackson, & Stanko, 2009; Frank, Smith, & Novak, 2005; Murphy, Hinds, & Fleming, 2008). In Canada, however, contemporary research – particularly that which is evidence based – is rather limited in the areas of policing, police service provision and the diverse areas policing affects or is affected by (Huey & Ricciardelli, 2016). This is particularly true of northern, remote and rural areas, as well as first nations policing services and in more specialized contexts within and across agencies of law enforcement.

Researchers have attempted to identify the reasons behind the lacuna in Canadian police research. Griffiths, Murphy, and Snow (2013) interviewed senior police leaders, government personnel, academics and other stakeholders (N = 27), finding their respondents were generally pessimistic about the current state of police research. This pessimism was due in large measure to the absence of structures and processes to facilitate funding for and collaboration on police research and the dissemination of findings. In contrast to other jurisdictions, including the United States and Australia, there has been virtually no collaboration among the key stakeholders in Canada and a general absence of strategic plans for police research at the provincial/territorial and federal levels of government.

Speaking directly to the relationships between academics and police, in ‘A Dialogue of Collaboration: Cooperation in Canadian Policing Research Today’, the first contributor to this special issue, Gregory Brown, expands the discussion about creating a robust and collaborative police-academic research paradigm in Canada. Brown, noting the historical mutual distrust and suspicion between police and academics, writes about the current unprecedented opportunities scholars now have in Canada to do research with police. Drawing on interviews with police leaders and police scholars across the country, he examines the levels of support for collaboration that can address the traditional distrust and antagonism that has existed between police and academics. He argues that a ‘dialogue of collaboration’ can now replace the ‘dialogue of the deaf’. The ‘dialogue of the deaf’ is a phrase first coined by Bradley and Nixon (2009) to describe the disconnection that often exists between the police and academia.

To encourage collaboration between agencies of law enforcement and academics, Professor Laura Huey founded the Canadian Society of Evidence Based Policing (CAN-SBP) in 2015. The society, which is affiliated with similar organizations in the United Kingdom, the United States and other jurisdictions, has grown from five founding members to over 600 members, 20 partners and 45 collaborators (Huey, 2017). The society brings together researchers and members of police services – encouraging the growth of pracademics (i.e., people who identify as both researchers and practitioners in their subject area (Posner, 2009)) – in order to build a foundation of evidence-based policing research (with practice outcomes) in Canada. In recognition of this effort, the second article in this special issue is a contribution from Huey and her colleagues.

Laura Huey, Brittany Blaskovits, Craig Bennell, Hina Kalyal, and Thomas Walker explore police receptivity to research in their contribution ‘When It Come to Implementing New Police Strategies and Programs, Are Police Agencies “Targeting, Testing, and Tracking?”’ They asked police professionals (N = 586) from seven Canadian police agencies, to reflect on whether their organization employs evidence-based policing (EBP) principles in daily operations; specifically, the principles of targeting, testing, and tracking when implementing new policing strategies. Finding that their respondents shared both positive and negative views about the ability of their agencies to target priority problems and test measures that respond to said problems, the authors contribute knowledge to the ongoing EBP dialogue, particularly concerning the difficulties police agencies encounter when trying to implement EBP strategies and assess outcomes.

The next set of contributions to the special issue examine specific facets of Canadian police work. In ‘The Mandate and Activities of a Specialized Crime Reduction Policing Unit in Canada’ Adrienne Peters and Irwin Cohen focus on policing in the province of British Columbia. They examined the transformation in Canadian policing from ‘crime prevention’ to ‘crime reduction’, acknowledging that, at the heart of both models, are the objectives of protecting the public and minimizing disorder and crime. Peters and Cohen use materials gathered in interviews with police officers to explore the mandates, creation, and efficacy of Crime Reduction Units in the RCMP. Their focus on unit members’ knowledge of the established tasks and objectives as well as whether the officers felt their activities aligned with the objectives revealed mixed results. Specifically, some of the Crime Reduction Units’ objectives, for example ‘outcome monitoring and evaluation’, were described as absent because there was not a dedicated crime analyst on the teams – instead, crime analysis was the responsibility of unit members and supervisors. Peters and Cohen argue that Crime Reduction Unit decision-making, like all special police initiatives, should be guided by a process that is more intelligence-led, evidence-based, and collaborative.

An ongoing concern in Canada is the overrepresentation of Aboriginal persons at all stages of the criminal justice system, from arrest to (over)incarceration. As part of the movement toward self-governance for Aboriginal and Indigenous groups, a number of police-related programs and policies have been developed to increase Indigenous control over the delivery of services. In the article, ‘Set Up To Fail?: An Analysis of Indigenous Police Services in Canada’, John Kiedrowski, Nick Jones and Rick Ruddell explore the origins and the evolution of the First Nations Policing Program (FNPP), which was introduced in 1992 to allow Indigenous peoples to establish their own self-administered police services. The intent of the FNPP was that Indigenous communities could work toward self-determination and their residents would receive professional and culturally-appropriate policing, which would represent an improvement over traditional policing models. Their findings suggest that, similar to many other well-intentioned criminal justice interventions, there is often a disconnection between the objectives and the outcomes of initiatives in policing.

The next contributions continue to highlight the distinctive geographic landscape of policing in Canada, in particular the under-studied area of policing in rural and northern communities (Crank, 1990; Decker, 1979; Pelfrey, 2007; Weisheit, Wells, & Falcone, 1995; Wood & Trostle, 1997). Recognizing the different challenges policing in these areas pose, in comparison to policing in urban locales, we include two contributions in this special issue that address the nuances of rural, remote and Northern police practices.

First, in their contribution ‘From Knowledge to Action? The Youth Criminal Justice Act and Use of Extrajudicial Measures in Youth Policing’, Rose Ricciardelli, Hayley Crichton, Liam Swiss, Dale Spencer and Micheal Adorjan reveal the challenges of implementing the provisions of the Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA) in rural communities. A core principle of the YCJA is the use of extrajudicial or alternative measures to divert youth in conflict with the law. Although the YCJA is federal legislation and applies to all jurisdictions in Canada, the lack of alternative support services and resources in rural areas often hinders the ability of the police to divert youth from the justice system. Thus, Ricciardelli and colleagues found that despite awareness of the legislation, too often officers are limited in their ability to fully adhere to it in light of limitations in implementation and other such hindrances common to policing in rural and Atlantic Canada. In the second contribution in the area, ‘Youth Perceptions of Police in Rural Atlantic Canada’, Michael Ajordan and his colleagues examine how youth in rural and remote areas perceive the police and the factors that shape their perceptions. Their findings provide insights into the dynamics of police-youth interactions in this inimitable context and the potential for, and obstacles to, the development of positive relationships.

In the final contribution, the focus moves to the health and wellness of police officers, a topic that is receiving increasing attention. Indeed, scholars have found that officers who report high levels of policing-related stress are at significantly increased risk for burnout, adverse physical and mental health outcomes, and negative behavioral outcomes (Gershon, Barocas, Canton, Li, & Vlahov, 2009; Violanti et al., 2011). In ‘Measuring Policing Stress Meaningfully: Establishing Norms and Cut-Off Values for the Operational and Organizational Police Stress Questionnaires’ Dianne Groll, Donald McCreary, and Ivy Fong set out gender-based norms and cut-off values for the Operational and Organizational Police Stress Questionnaires (PSQ-Op and PSQ-Org). They posit that, by developing group level gender-based norms and cut-off values, police services will be able to determine the relative levels of stress that their members are experiencing, which are useful tools for understanding individual differences in the perception of policing-specific stress. Their work provides police agencies with a baseline with which to judge the effectiveness of stress-reduction interventions or new resilience-based training initiatives, and cut-offs that can identify the percentage of employees who might be experiencing high, moderate, and low levels of policing-specific stress.

This Special Issue concludes with a review of Greg Marquis’ book The Vigilant Eye; Policing Canada from 1867 to 9/11 by James Sheptycki. In the review, Sheptycki discusses the book’s contemporary reflection on the history of Canadian policing and considers three concerns that have shaped the debates surrounding Canadian policing: the economics of policing, technology and policing, and police legitimacy, which together underpin the development of modern police in the country. The book, and the review, provide further insights into the Canadian policing landscape.

The articles in this special issue illustrate the diversity of research being conducted by Canadian academics on policing. Our objective as co-editors was to assemble contributions that highlight, to a national and international audience of police, academics, governments, and others, the types of police research being conducted in Canada as well as the multifold landscapes that shape policing across the country. It is our hope that these materials will serve as a catalyst for additional research on Canadian policing and also provide a framework for cross-national, comparative research studies.

We would like to thank the contributors and reviewers for their efforts, dedication and the sharing of their knowledge. Specifically, we would like to thank those who complied with our rather unreasonable requests for quick turnarounds on peer-reviews and revisions. Of particular note, we extend a specific thank you to Jennifer Schulenberg.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Rose Ricciardelli is an associate professor and the coordinator of Criminology at Memorial University. She is the inaugural associate director, Corrections, for the Canadian Institute of Public Safety Research and Treatment (CIPSRT). Her research is centered on evolving understandings of gender, vulnerabilities, risk, and experiences and issues within different facets of the criminal justice system. Her current work includes a focus on the experiences of correctional officers and police officers given the potential for compromised psychological, physical, and social health inherent to the occupations.

Curt Taylor Griffiths is a professor in the School of Criminology at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, British Columbia. Beyond his work as a policing researcher, he also has a keen interest in the variety of contexts within which the justice system operates, from international jurisdictions to urban centers, to the remote Canadian north. The overall objective of his work is always to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the criminal justice system and to address the needs of communities and, in particular, at-risk and vulnerable groups.