scholarly journals Peeling the paradigm: Exploring the professionalization of policing in Canada

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kelly Sundberg ◽  
Christina Witt ◽  
Graham Abela ◽  
Lauren M. Mitchell

Maintaining public trust, legitimacy, and credibility in a constantly evolving society has proven challenging for police in the 21st century. Rising public concerns regarding police accountability are driving the need to advance the paradigm of policing by reassessing the organizational structure of law enforcement in Canada. Supported by research identifying primary directives for maintaining public trust, this proposal argues that the time has come for policing to evolve from an occupation into a formal profession. Just as any other occupation that has advanced into a profession, provincial regulatory colleges of policing should be formed with the key objective of protecting the public from malpractice and malfeasance. A provincial college of policing would allow for (a) sustained and inclusive recruitment strategies, (b) foundational knowledge of the scholarship of policing, (c) evidence-based academy training, (d) mandatory ongoing (in-service) police education, and (e) expert, objective, community-focused, independent oversight. This proposal uses characteristics of the College of Policing in England and Wales as a guiding framework for the support and preparation of professionalizing policing in Canada.

1996 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 497-517
Author(s):  
Abdel Rahman Ahmed Abdel Rahman

Public bureaucracies, a general term including government agenciesand departments in the areas of public utilities, social services, regulatoryservices, security, and law enforcement, are indispensable to our welfare;we need them for the provision of these basic services. To provide theseservices, bureaucracies need such resources as power and money. Thepower of bureaucracies is compounded by their virtual monopoly of technicalexpertise, which puts bureaucrats at the forefront of public policymaking.Indispensable to our welfare though they are, public bureaucracies alsopose a potential threat. In view of the technical knowledge they have andtheir consequent important role in policy making, they may dominate publiclife. In other words, they may develop into a power elite and, as a result,act as masters of the public rather than as its servants. More disturbingly,they may not use the public trust to serve the public or respond to its needs.Still more disturbingly, they may breach the public trust or abuse the powerentrusted to them.All of these possibilities have given rise to a widespread fear ofbureaucracy. In some societies, this fear has reached pandemic levels.Fear of bureaucracy is not unwarranted; there is a consensus and concernin administrative and academic circles that the degree of bureaucraticaccountability has declined in both developed and developingcountries. A central issue with public bureaucracy has always beenhow to make it behave responsibly or in the public interest. Despite aplethora of mechanisms for ensuring administrative responsibility orbureaucratic responsiveness, many public bureaucracies may still be unresponsive and unaccountable ...


2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 177-191
Author(s):  
Mohd Andalusia Masri ◽  
Dahlan Ali ◽  
Darmawan Darmawan

This research aims to evaluate the police's request to postpone the criminal charge reading of the blasphemy case at the North Jakarta District Court, which was not based on Indonesia's positive law. The request to postpone a trial by the police without a legal basis could be considered a form of police intervention against the trial process, which has legal criminal consequences based on Article 3 Paragraph 2 and 3 of Law Number 48 of 2009 concerning Judicial Power. Meanwhile, the request for a two-week trial postponement by the public prosecutors due to their inability to complete the criminal indictment, as well as considering the request from the police, has created an impression that the public prosecutors have complied with the request of the police. It also injured public trust that demanded a fair and transparent law enforcement process.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennie Haw ◽  
Rachel Thorpe ◽  
Kelly Holloway

COVID-19 has posed unprecedented challenges to health systems around the world, including bloodcollection agencies (BCAs). Many countries, such as Canada and Australia, that rely on non-remuneratedvoluntary donors, saw an initial drop in donors in the early days of the pandemic followed by a return tosufficient levels of the blood supply. BCA messaging plays a key role in communicating the needs of theblood operator, promoting and encouraging donation, educating, and connecting with the public anddonors. This paper reports on discourse analysis (Bloor and Bloor, 2013) of BCA messaging in Canadaand Australia from March 1-July 31, 2020 to understand how BCAs constructed donation to encouragedonation during this period and what this can tell us about public trust and blood operators. Drawing onmultiple sources of online content and print media, our analysis identified four dominant messagesduring the study period: 1) blood donation is safe; 2) blood donation is designated an essential activity;3) blood is needed; and 4) blood donation is a response to the pandemic. In Canada and Australia, ouranalysis suggests that: 1) implicit within constructions of blood donation as safe is the message thatBCAs can be trusted; 2) messages that construct blood donation as essential and needed implicitly askdonors to trust BCAs in order to share in the commitment of meeting patient needs; and 3) thepandemic has made possible the construction of blood donation as both an exceptional andcommonplace activity. For BCAs, our analysis supports donor communications that are transparent andresponsive to public concerns, and the local context, to support public trust. Beyond BCAs, healthorganizations and leaders cannot underestimate the importance of building and maintaining public trustas countries continue to struggle with containment of the virus and encourage vaccine uptake.


Bothalia ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew C. Blackmore

A significant proportion of South African biodiversity occurs in extensive private wildlife areas. As such, the continuance of these private reserves is paramount to conservation of the country’s biodiversity. The areas are, however, vulnerable to being divided into smaller camps as landowners enter into the new and rapidly growing industry of selective breeding and intensive management of antelope and predators. Concerns are being raised as to the long-term consequences of the products and impacts of this industry on, inter alia, integrity and conservation of the country’s wildlife, and the landscapes these facilities are located in, as well as the country’s reputation as a free ranging and fair chase hunting destination. Using the public trust doctrine as a foundation, this article characterises the relationship between the country’s environmental law and the roles played by government as the regulator, the wildlife industry, research and the public in achieving responsible wildlife management and the long-term conservation of this resource. These relationships are seen to be finely balanced between the provision of robust science, and evidence-based and cautious or risk-averse decision-making. It is concluded that the public trust doctrine is a powerful tool to limit the impacts of unsustainable and parochial use of wildlife on the conservation of biodiversity. It is also concluded that an improved understanding of the doctrine by researchers, public and the wildlife industry would lead to a greater relevance of research, and in turn sound evidence-based decision-making and ultimately sustainable use of wildlife.


Author(s):  
Michael T Rossler ◽  
Michael J Suttmoeller

Abstract This research is among the first to examine the degree to which law enforcement officers tasked with protection of natural resources feel prepared for specialized and general tasks by their academy training. Drawing upon a survey of over 900 conservation officers across 13 states, the current inquiry examines whether officers who attended a conservation-specific academy feel better prepared for their work than those who attended a conventional police academy. Findings suggest conservation officers feel well prepared for their general policing duties by their academy experience, but fewer than half of the officers surveyed felt that their academy experience prepared them to handle nuisance wildlife calls or consult with landowners on habitat needs. Officers who attended a conservation academy held greater perceptions that their academy prepared them for specialized duties. These findings help inform state conservation agencies about the topics which are well covered or need additional attention in their pre-employment training curricula, as well as recruitment strategies for varying academy types.


2016 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 111-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel L. Stageman ◽  
Nicole M. Napolitano ◽  
Brian Buchner

In April of 2016, National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement (NACOLE) and John Jay College partnered to sponsor the Academic Symposium “Building Public Trust: Generating Evidence to Enhance Police Accountability and Legitimacy.” This essay introduces the Criminal Justice Policy Review Special Issue featuring peer-reviewed, empirical research papers first presented at the Symposium. We provide context for the Symposium in relation to contemporary national discourse on police accountability and legitimacy. In addition, we review each of the papers presented at the Symposium, and provide in-depth reviews of each of the manuscripts included in the Special Issue.


2021 ◽  
pp. 026101832110339
Author(s):  
Kathryn Henne ◽  
Krystle Shore ◽  
Jenna Imad Harb

Public demands for greater police accountability, particularly in relation to violence targeting Black and Brown communities, have placed pressure on law enforcement organisations to be more transparent about officers’ actions. The implementation of police body-worn cameras (BWCs) has become a popular response. This article examines the embrace of BWCs amidst the wider shift toward evidence-based policing by scrutinising the body of research that evaluates the effects of these technologies. Through an intertextual analysis informed by insights from Critical Race Theory and Science and Technology Studies, we illustrate how the privileging of certain forms of empiricism, particularly randomised controlled trials, evinces what Woolgar and Pawluch describe as ontological gerrymandering. In doing so, the emergent evidence base supporting BWCs as a policing tool constitutively redefines police violence into a narrow conceptualisation rooted in encounters between citizens and police. This analysis examines how these framings, by design, minimise racialised power relations and inequalities. We conclude by reflecting on the implications of these evidence-based claims, arguing that they can direct attention away from – and thus can buttress – the structural conditions and institutions that perpetuate police violence.


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