October 2022

Volume 64, No. 4 | Go to abstracts

Articles

Find it on UTP

Page 1

Stumbling from One Disaster to Another: The COVID-19 Pandemic and Mental Health Calls for Police Service across Canada
Martin Andresen, Tarah Hodgkinson

Page 21

Police and Crown Prosecutor Use of Restorative Justice and Diversion for Adults and Youth in a High-Crime Area
Michael Weinrath, Braeden Broschuk

Page 26

Racial Diversity, Majority–Minority Gap, and Confidence in the Criminal Justice System
Yue Liu, Huiqun Wang, Jinjin Liu, Tony Huiquan Zhang

Page 47

Effectiveness of 12 Types of Interventions in Reducing Juvenile Offending and Antisocial Behaviour
David P. Farrington, Hannah Gaffney, Howard White

Page 69

“Giving the Highest Chance of a Good Outcome”: Exploring the Missing Persons Act in British Columbia and Ontario from the Policing Perspective
Lorna Ferguson

Abstracts

Stumbling from One Disaster to Another: The COVID-19 Pandemic and Mental Health Calls for Police Service across Canada

Martin Andresen, Tarah Hodgkinson

The COVID-19 pandemic had a significant impact on crime in Canada and internationally. However, less is known about the impact of the pandemic on police-reported mental-health-related incidents. We explore three types of mental-health-related incidents (suicide and suicide attempts, Mental Health Act apprehensions, and mental health [other]) against property and violent crimes, across 13 police jurisdictions in Canada. Despite an international decline in most crime types during COVID-19, we find general stability across police-reported mental-health-related incidents. These findings suggest that the change in social behaviour that reduced opportunities for crime did not have a similar effect on mental-health-related incidents. It also suggests that calls for increased police budgets to respond to expected increases in mental-health-related incidents may be unjustified.

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Police and Crown Prosecutor Use of Restorative Justice and Diversion for Adults and Youth in a High-Crime Area

Michael Weinrath, Braeden Broschuk

This research assesses the use of diversion and restorative justice (RJ) referrals by patrol officers and Crown prosecutors in a high-crime urban community. Of interest was the influence on referral of legal factors such as prior criminal history and offence severity and the potential impact of extra-legal factors such as age, gender, and Indigenous ethnicity. Data on 1,000 eligible offenders during a 6-month study period were analyzed. About 15% of eligible cases were referred. Police and Crown were not as aggressive as desirable, with the police passing on some eligible low-severity cases later referred by prosecutors. As prior criminal history increased referrals declined, with a more pronounced impact at the patrol officer level. In bivariate analysis, age, gender, and marital, student, and unemployment status exerted small effects, but these were non-significant in multivariate analysis. No evidence of ethnic disparity was found. Crime types of less serious violence and lower property, as well as prior convictions, had moderate bivariate effects, and these persisted in multivariate analysis. Although most cases referred had a limited criminal history and involved minor crimes, police and prosecutors did refer a few involving serious violent offences and prior convictions, showing potential for greater use of RJ.

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Effectiveness of 12 Types of Interventions in Reducing Juvenile Offending and Antisocial Behaviour

David P. Farrington, Hannah Gaffney, Howard White

The main aim of this article is to summarize the best available evidence (from systematic reviews) of the effectiveness of 12 types of interventions in reducing juvenile offending and antisocial behaviour. In the interests of making the results widely understandable to researchers, practitioners, policy makers, and the general public, all effect sizes are converted into percentage decreases in antisocial behaviour or offending. Based on the most important systematic review in each category, the most effective interventions are parent training, focused deterrence, child skills training, cognitive–behavioural therapy, mentoring, and family therapy. Anti-bullying programs, anti-cyberbullying programs, and pre-court diversion programs are quite effective, while school exclusion reduction, after-school programs, and boot camps are least effective. The good news is that, based on estimated reductions in offending, intervention programs are usually found to be much more effective than is commonly believed (based on other measures).

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“Giving the Highest Chance of a Good Outcome”: Exploring the Missing Persons Act in British Columbia and Ontario from the Policing Perspective

Lorna Ferguson

British Columbia and Ontario are two of the Canadian provinces and territories that have enacted a Missing Persons Act, legislation aimed at improving the police investigation of missing person cases. Understanding the Acts in these regions from the policing perspective presents an opportunity to assess their efficacy and utility. Therefore, the purposes of this study are to examine police perceptions of and experiences with the Missing Persons Act in each region. Through in-depth, semi-structured interviews with police officers from over 20 services across these regions, this article explores police insights into the impacts, challenges, and benefits of the Acts related to missing persons work. Additionally, police support for and perceptions of this legislation are uncovered. Results show that police view the Acts in these regions as enhancing missing persons work through standardization and strengthening abilities to obtain information and records, follow various leads, and use technologies that assist in successfully locating missing people. However, a paradox emerged: Police are reluctant to make use of this legislation. Explanations for this and the implications of these findings are discussed.

June 9, 2023
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