January 2019
Volume 61, No. 1 | Go to abstracts
Obituaries
Page 1
Denis Szabo (1929–2018): Founder of Canadian Criminology in Québec
François Fenchel, John Winterdyk
Page 8
Qui était Denis Szabo, ce Hongrois fondateur de la criminologie québécoise ?
Maurice Cusson
Articles
Page 15
Exploring Barriers to Researching the Economics of Municipal Policing
Victoria A. Sytsma, Erick Laming
Page 41
Community Policing: Perceptions of Officers Policing Indigenous Communities
Nicholas A. Jones, Rick Ruddell, Tansi Summerfield
Page 66
“Jailers in the Community”: Responsibilizing Private Citizens as Third-Party Police
Nicole Marie Myers
Page 86
A Critical Analysis of Securities Crime in Canada
Bronwen Russell, Hongming Cheng
Commentary
Page 105
Not in My Backyard: Public Sex Offender Registries and Public Notification Laws
Patrick Lussier, Jeff Mathesius
Abstracts
Exploring Barriers to Researching the Economics of Municipal Policing
Victoria A. Sytsma, Erick Laming
Using Ontario municipal expenditure and access to various technologies as an entry point, this article identifies several barriers to and limitations of studying the economics of policing in Canada. We explore several data sources, including the Police Administration Survey, Statistics Canada Census Program, the Uniform Crime Reporting Survey, and municipal and First Nations police service annual reports. We conclude that in an era of evidence-based policing, Canadian researchers and practitioners are unable to explore capital expenditure in any meaningful way because of restrictions on accessing detailed equipment information, as well as limitations of the existing Police Administration Survey. Further, several challenges are associated with identifying land area of jurisdiction and size of population served by municipal police services. Such challenges are heightened in those jurisdictions served by First Nations services.
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Community Policing: Perceptions of Officers Policing Indigenous Communities
Nicholas A. Jones, Rick Ruddell, Tansi Summerfield
The introduction of the First Nations Policing Program (FNPP) in 1992 was intended to provide professional and culturally appropriate policing responsive to community needs; however, there is considerable evidence that these efforts have fallen short of what was originally envisioned. This research examines perceptions about police work from a 2014 survey of 827 sworn officers policing Indigenous communities and draws some comparisons to the results of surveys conducted in 1996 and 2007 by different sets of researchers that asked the same questions of officers policing these places. Our results show that perceptions have changed: Officers in 2014 were less likely to favour key aspects of community policing, such as getting to know community members, soliciting help from the community, or getting help from community agencies, and a growing number of officers did not feel that Indigenous policing required a different policing style. We found these results varied according to the respondent’s organizational affiliation and whether the individual was of Indigenous ancestry; additionally, as the proportion of non-Indigenous and Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers increased, the support for community policing decreased. Given these findings, implications for a renewal of Indigenous policing are discussed.
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“Jailers in the Community”: Responsibilizing Private Citizens as Third-Party Police
Nicole Marie Myers
To ameliorate pre-trial risk and provide some insurance to the court, a surety – someone who agrees to supervise an accused while on bail and promises a sum of money if the accused fails to appear in court, commits an offence, or breaches a condition of their release – is required. Despite a legal framework that stipulates a presumption of release on unconditional bail, sureties are presumed to be required for most releases in Ontario. As an organizational risk management tool, sureties are responsibilized to take on a third-party policing function, offering the state access to private spaces for enhanced governance and surveillance. In assigning policing powers and responsibilities to private citizens, the state is extending its policing capacities, sharing its authority while simultaneously expanding its regulatory power.
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A Critical Analysis of Securities Crime in Canada
Bronwen Russell, Hongming Cheng
“Canada’s securities markets serve an important function by (a) enabling corporations to buy, sell, trade, or otherwise use securities to generate or maintain capital, and (b) encouraging investors to participate. Protecting these markets from crime is difficult. A dialectical analysis of the decisions, extending orders, orders, settlement agreements, and official news releases from the provincial securities regulators between the years 1986 and 2012 revealed how the opportunities for and the ability to conceal such crimes are created. Institutions, power, and ideology are the underlying concepts used to explain the criminogenic nature of the markets.
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Not in My Backyard: Public Sex Offender Registries and Public Notification Laws
Patrick Lussier, Jeff Mathesius
In Canada, the community risk management strategy utilized does not include a publicly available sex offender registry. While there is a non-public national sex offender registry for police investigation purposes, in recent years, there has been ongoing pressure to import American sex offender registry and notification (SORN) laws in Canada. Such pressure has been supplemented by the emergence of an increasing number of individual initiatives mimicking these policies by providing personal information through various means about individuals convicted of sex crimes. Since their inception, the American SORN laws have been the subject of much debate among scholars, policy makers, and the Victims’ Rights Movement. Despite the popularity of American-style SORN laws among certain circles, policy evaluation research has not presented convincing evidence that such measures carry a crime prevention impact. In fact, American scholars have highlighted several issues, problems, and challenges that are overlooked by promoters of SORN policies in Canada. The mere presence of such policies in the U.S. should not be interpreted as an indication of good policing of sexual violence and abuse. A concerted scientific approach rather than punitive populism is much needed to tackle the issue of sexual violence and abuse in Canada.