Contemporary Issues In Canadian Policing

Focuses on the important challenges facing the police and the community. Part I articulates two views of public policing : policing as force, and policing as risk minimization. Part II examines the new paradigm of community policing and outlines the principles and practices of a made-in-Canada community policing model. Part III looks at the critical issues of the police subculture, ethics and technology. Part IV discusses human resources issues of managing diversity, women in policing, and the recruitment and promotion of visible minorities and aboriginal people. Part V features operational issues such as public order, interrogation, the use of force, police discretion and transnational policing. Part VI explores trends and prospects in the 21st century and the challenges of globalization, terrorism, national security, racial profiling, organizational performance measurement, and the public policing-private security debate.

These essays address issues like police regionalization, the role of police unions, the use of police tactical units, and the role of women in policing.

How can police remain effective and vital in an era of unprecedented technological advances, access to information, and the global transformation of crime? Written by a long-serving officer, Canadian Policing in the 21st Century offers a rare look at street-level police work and the hidden culture behind the badge. Robert Chrismas shares experiences from his years of service to highlight areas where police can more effectively enforce laws and improve relations with the communities they serve. He proposes tactics for addressing widespread social issues such as gang and domestic violence and strategies for cooperating in international networks tackling human trafficking, internet-based child exploitation, organized crime, and terrorism. Chrismas stresses how changing demographics related to age, gender and racial diversity, and increased dangers and demands, require intensified training and higher education in policing. He highlights the need for more effective collaborative relationships between police and local, provincial, and federal governments, non-government agencies, and their communities. While the principles and goals of policing remain largely unchanged, police challenges, tools, and strategies have evolved dramatically. Chrismas's vantage point as an officer and a scholar provides an illuminating account of the Canadian justice system, and road-maps to future success.

Police services around the world are embarking on a major period of change that has seen few parallels since the founding of modern policing in the 19th century. A conflation of factors some long-standing, others of more recent origin, but all significant – are now coalescing, with implications for the traditional ways in which police services have been providing safety and security for the public. Today, there are many actors who help ensure a safe and secure environment, including technical specialists, public and private security providers, and first responders. As such, police have begun to work within a safety and security web that requires new and dynamic partnerships, flexibility, and adaptability. In addition, police are addressing increasingly complex and global crimes such as terrorism, identity theft, and cybercrime. These challenges, along with increasing costs, have led many around the world and in Canada to re-examine the traditional policing model and consider what modern approaches are required to ensure effective and efficient policing for the future.

This book looks at police reform in Canada, arguing that no significant and sustainable reform can occur until steps are taken to answer the question of 'What exactly do we want police to do?' Adding challenge to this is that setting boundaries on what we expect the police to do requires grappling with the complex social problems we ask them to resolve. In public policy language, these are ‘wicked problems’ – social or cultural issues frequently seen as intractable. Authors Huey, Ferguson, and Schulenberg, all policing scholars, draw on a unique collection of data to explore these issues: over 20 years of research (2000– 2021) ranging from in-depth interviews, surveys, and field observations to document analysis and systematic social observation. Pooling this data generates a national-level picture of changes in the policing operational environment over these decades. This book focuses on four particular wicked problems (mental health, substance misuse, homelessness, missing persons) with causes and potential preventative treatments that lie primarily outside the criminal justice system and yet continue to be treated as 'policing problems.' Bringing about changes in public policing requires changes in public policy, and these are precisely the types of wicked problems that need innovative policy solutions. This book is suitable for a wide range of audiences within and outside Canada, including law enforcement and community leaders; scholars and policy experts who specialize in policing; students of criminal justice, organizations, and management; and citizen-consumers of information about policing.

This Introductory Policing text covers the history of policing in Canada, the current structure and operation of policing, the legal context and the power police officers exert and contemporary issues facing policing today. Bridging the gap between theory and application in the world of policing, Canadian Police Work surveys all of the current research in the area and uses practical examples and case studies to offer new insights from an interdisciplinary approach.

In the summer of 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic surged, millions gathered across Canada and the United States to protest violence and racism in policing sparked by the murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers. In the days and weeks following, the deaths of Regis Korchinski-Paquet in Toronto and Chantel Moore in New Brunswick showed that police violence is also a Canadian reality. Although BIPOC communities and activists had been calling for action for years, these events sparked unprecedented public outrage and drew crowds in the thousands across Canada calling for the defunding of Canada’s police. Many authoritative reports have identified big problems in Canada’s law enforcement system and have concluded that police are more likely to create or escalate violent situations than promote safety and security. Why? How has an institution tasked with keeping citizens safe become so dangerous to so many Canadians? John Sewell has been studying the problems facing Canadian policing since the 1980s. In Crisis in Canada's Policing, he shines light on the origins of police culture, synthesizes dozens of reports that reveal the failures of the police system in Canada and offers solutions that put power back into the hands of community leaders while reining in and reforming police organizations.

Delving behind Canada’s veneer of multiculturalism and tolerance, Policing Black Lives traces the violent realities of anti-blackness from the slave ships to prisons, classrooms and beyond. Robyn Maynard provides readers with the first comprehensive account of nearly four hundred years of state-sanctioned surveillance, criminalization and punishment of Black lives in Canada. While highlighting the ubiquity of Black resistance, Policing Black Lives traces the still-living legacy of slavery across multiple institutions, shedding light on the state’s role in perpetuating contemporary Black poverty and unemployment, racial profiling, law enforcement violence, incarceration, immigration detention, deportation, exploitative migrant labour practices, disproportionate child removal and low graduation rates. Emerging from a critical race feminist framework that insists that all Black lives matter, Maynard’s intersectional approach to anti-Black racism addresses the unique and understudied impacts of state violence as it is experienced by Black women, Black people with disabilities, as well as queer, trans, and undocumented Black communities. A call-to-action, Policing Black Lives urges readers to work toward dismantling structures of racial domination and re-imagining a more just society.