The recruitment of women and visible minorities into Canadian police forces: Should we expect further progress?

Stephen B Perrott

doi:10.1177/0032258x211032106

Abstract

The recruitment of women and minority group members was intended to move Canadian police forces towards societal representation and to enhance services provided to, and improve relations with, women and racially marginalized groups. This review contemplates progress towards these goals at a time of extraordinary public dissatisfaction with Western policing. A rationale is offered for reconsidering the 50% representation target for women and it is emphasized just how little we yet know about racial bias in policing. The review ends with a call for rigorous, apolitical, research to untangle the complex interactions underscoring the considered questions within.

Highlights

The social unrest of the 1960s prompted three categories of police reform: the ascendance of community-oriented policing (COP), greater civilian oversight and the creation of a more diverse institution through the recruitment of women and visible minority group members (Sklansky, 2006)
US findings play a disproportionate role in this review because of their availability but because of the impact that the American experience has had on police practice, and perceptions thereof, throughout the Western world (Goff and Kahn, 2012)
This review, meant to examine the degree to which the targeted hiring of women and members of visible minority groups to Canadian police forces has succeeded against original goals, shows that answers to the most important of the questions remain elusive

Summary

Introduction

The social unrest of the 1960s prompted three categories of police reform: the ascendance of community-oriented policing (COP), greater civilian oversight and the creation of a more diverse institution through the recruitment of women and visible minority group members (Sklansky, 2006). In a dated Canadian-based study, Jackson (1997) integrated survey findings with her 8 years of police experience in concluding that male resistance remained a reality, relations were significantly improved relative to when she began. Perrott (2018) surveyed officers from a mid-sized Canadian municipal force for perceptions of progress in the quality of services provided to women and in the degree to which the workplace had become inclusive for female members.

Results

Conclusion