Canadian Police Research Articles

‘Me’ versus ‘We’: exploring the personal and professional identity-threatening experiences of police officers and the factors that contribute to them

ABSTRACT From semi-structured interviews with 42 Canadian police officers, the study suggests that the occupational context created both personal and professional identity threats are largely based on the degree to which officers aligned with the image of the ideal worker as physically strong, aggressive and committed to the job. Because perceived nonconforming members also violated gendered expectations for behavior, they not only experienced threats to their personal identities, but also were potentially subjected to bullying, harassment, and isolation. Socialization processes and occupational stigma were identified as two key factors that intensified the occupational identity and the ‘us’ and ‘them’ divide leading to more vigorous defenses against group identity threats. Despite the salience of these contextual factors, not all officers experienced the identity threats in the same way, highlighting changing views on what it means to be an ‘ideal’ police officer as well as opportunities for reform.

Promoting Voice in Policing: The Role of Imagination, Centralization, and Psychological Safety

This article aims to trace the antecedents of promotive and prohibitive voicing in the police workforce. We draw from trait activation theory to develop a model that includes individual and organizational factors that can create or hinder the social support necessary for police officers to adopt voice behavior. Specifically, we argue feelings of psychological safety emerge and encourage voicing from imaginative individuals depending on the centralization dynamics in which they operate. We used time-lagged, survey-based data from 326 Canadian police officers to test our theory. We found that imaginative officers operating in a decentralized context exercise more voicing thanks to heightened feelings of psychological safety. However, imagination can backfire in a context of centralization because officers feel less psychologically safe and refrain from speaking out. Our study helps shed light on which officers can become inclined to engage in voice behavior and under what circumstances, which offers significant contributions to both theory and practice.

Developing core national indicators of public attitudes towards the police in Canada

Developing core national indicators of public attitudes towards the police in Canada

Developing core national indicators of public attitudes towards the police in Canada

ABSTRACT Police departments regularly conduct public opinion surveys to measure attitudes towards the police. The results of these surveys can be used to shape and evaluate policing policy and practice. Yet the extant evidence base is hampered when people use different methods and when there is no common data standard. In this paper we present a set of 13 core national indicators that can be used by police services across Canada to ensure measurement quality and draw proper comparisons between regions and over time. Having identified a set of 50 survey questions through an expert consultation process, we field those items on a quota sample of 2527 Canadians. Our analysis of the survey data has three stages. First, we use confirmatory factor analysis to assess scale properties. Second, we use substitution analysis to identify 13 single indicators that ‘best stand in’ for each scale. Third, we use the set of 50 and the sub-set of 13 measures to test procedural justice theory for the first time in the Canadian context. Overall, those commissioning and managing public attitudes surveys can use the 13 core indicators as a conceptually-rich and empirically-validated tool through which to understand local survey data in the context of other municipal, provincial, territorial and national contexts.

Policemen, COVID-19, and police culture: navigating the pandemic with colleagues, the public, and family

ABSTRACT Scholars have long identified the culture of policing as resisting change and impeding reform (Campeau, 2019. Institutional myths and generational boundaries: cultural inertia in the police organisation. Policing and society, 29 (1), 69–84. doi:10.1080/10439463.2017.1371718; Chan, 1996. Changing police culture. British journal of criminology, 36 (1), 109–134. doi:10.1093/oxfordjournals.bjc.a014061), and the advent of COVID-19 has been optimal for studying this culture. Early research on the pandemic identified some temporary cultural shifts within policing or at least the potential for these (e.g. Alcadipani, 2020. Pandemic and macho organizations: wake-up call or business as usual? Gender, work and organization, 27 (5), 734–746). Our research analyzes data from 18 qualitative interviews with Canadian police officers who identified as men about their experiences at work and home, approximately five months into the pandemic. Drawing on Campeau's (2015. “Police culture” at work: making sense of police oversight. British journal of criminology, 55, 669–687. doi:10.1093/bjc/azu093) theorising of police culture as a resource, we illustrate how officers drew on the macho police culture ‘toolkit’ differently depending on the social context. With colleagues, they normalised risks posed by the pandemic; when interacting with the public, they highlighted the risks around policing during the pandemic; and with family, officers both downplayed risks at work to reassure their children of their safety and highlighted pandemic-related risks at home with their families. Our research points to the importance of recognising that culture is not homogenous; rather it is taken up differently depending on the organisation, the social context, and the moment in time.

Gender in the Flesh: Allostatic Load as the Embodiment of Stressful, Gendered Work in Canadian Police Communicators

Gender and work are important social determinants of health, yet studies of health inequities related to the gendered and emotional intricacies of work are rare. Occupations high in emotional labour – a known job stressor – are associated with ill-health and typically dominated by women. Little is known about the mechanisms linking health with these emotional components of work. Using physiological and questionnaire data from Canadian police communicators, we adopt an embodied approach to understanding the relationship between gender norm conformity, emotional labour, and physiological dysregulation, or allostatic load. For high conformers, emotional labour leaves gendered traces in the flesh via increased allostatic load, suggesting that in this way, gendered structures in the workplace become embodied, influencing health through conformity to gender and emotion norms. Findings also reveal that dichotomous conceptions of gender may mask the impact of gendered structures, obscuring the consequences of gender for work-related stress.

Taking the Temperature: An Intersectional Examination of Diversity Acceptance in Canadian Police Services

AbstractThis exploratory study analyses data from in-depth interviews (116 from 31 police services across Canada) and an online survey (N = 727) to examine how gender and racial ideologies inform ongoing cultural and structural adherence to hegemonic whiteness and masculinity, impacting who has power (and who does not) within the institution of policing. White, cisgender, heterosexual men were the most likely to present views consistent with white supremacist patriarchy. Their ongoing cultural, structural, and material power created gatekeeping conditions that are at least part of the explanation for barriers to the recruitment and promotion of racialized women, men, and white women. Findings also reveal that a significant proportion of white women and some racialized men also upheld these ideologies, indicating cultural-level buy-in. There were disrupters who attempted to influence cultural and structural change, but barriers and resistance at leadership levels remain. Thus, this study adds to the growing body of evidence that diversity representation alone has not, and will not, transform the institution in a timely and meaningful way.

The Moral Injury of Ineffective Police Leadership: A Perspective.

Research suggests that Canadian police officers are exposed to trauma at a greater frequency than the general population. This, combined with other operational stressors, such as risk of physical injury, high consequence of error, and strained resources, can leave officers less resilient to organizational stressors. In my experience, a significant and impactful organizational stressor is ineffective leadership, which include leaders who are non-supportive, inconsistent, egocentric, and morally ambiguous. Ineffective leadership in the context of paramilitary police culture has been recognized as psychologically distressing. Further, moral injury may result when leadership fails to meet officers’ needs, expectations, and values. Ineffective leadership and resulting moral injuries are an understudied area in the literature. This review will help provide a comprehensive context of policing and the impact of ineffective leadership on police mental health.

Regimes of representation in Canadian police museums: Othering, police subjectivities, and gunscapes

There are dozens of public police museums located across Canada that memorialize the country’s history of law enforcement and criminalization. Drawing from fieldwork at these sites, we explore the representational devices used to curate police museum displays. Invoking Stuart Hall’s work on representation and Othering, we examine how gun displays at Canadian police museums are organized to minimize the harm that police interventions with guns cause. Arguing these displays are made intelligible through a regime of representation that naturalizes the distinction between police officers and the “criminal” Other, we examine how these museums position weaponry including the gun as an esthetic object and a force of social good when in the hands of police. Analyzing curatorial strategies such as the arrangement of weapons, mannequin placement, dress, and level of humanization, as well as the rhetoric and narratives espoused on accompanying placards, we show how the curatorial approach in these spaces ratify an ideological framework that normalizes police violence and criminalization. We then assess what our analysis contributes to literatures on police museums and policing myths.

Offenders on judicial orders: Implications for evidence-based risk management in policing

There is little known about individuals who serve judicial protective orders called Section 810.1 and 810.2 peace bonds. Many Canadian police services provide supervision of these individuals, who are deemed high risk for violence, yet little research has been done on community supervision by police. The current study profiles the characteristics of 45 adult supervisees who were serving 810.1 and 810.2 orders and supervised by a local police service. The findings indicate that a majority of these individuals have experienced childhood abuse and neglect, lack high school education, were exposed to parental alcoholism, and demonstrated evidence of mental health problems. Further, and perhaps less surprising, they had remarkable histories for criminal behaviour, in terms of frequency, severity, and antisocial behaviour. Most of the individuals had criminogenic risk factors and responsivity issues that required attention at the start of their supervision. This study highlights the high needs of individuals under judicial orders and provides insight into the level of resources needed to supervise them. Implications for training law enforcement in applying effective principles of rehabilitation and risk assessment are discussed.

The Link Between Social Support and Psychological Vulnerability Among Canadian Police Officers

The Link Between Social Support and Psychological Vulnerability Among Canadian Police Officers

Police perspectives on interviewing older adult victims and witnesses: Preliminary findings and call for future research

ABSTRACT As the proportion of older adults (OAs) in the population continues to increase, so too will the frequency of police interactions with OAs and the need to gather accurate and detailed accounts from them. Yet, research on police information-gathering with OAs remains relatively scarce. This qualitative study begins to address this gap. We conducted semi-structured interviews with an experienced Canadian police sample (N = 10) regarding their involvement with, and perspectives on, interviewing OA victims and witnesses. Participants reported heterogeneous interactions with OAs, identified barriers that OAs face (e.g., shame), and affirmed the unavailability of training and official guidance on information-gathering with OAs. Our findings highlight existing practical challenges and future research avenues.

Lessons learned from dual site formative evaluations of Countering violent extremism (CVE) programming co-led by Canadian police

ABSTRACT Drawing on lessons learned from recently completed formative evaluations of police co-led CVE programming in Toronto, Ontario and Calgary, Alberta, this research aims to underscore the importance of, and provide technical guidance on, evaluation and reporting standards in the context of multi-agency CVE programming – which ultimately will help to facilitate the identification and replication of good practice. The results of the evaluative process highlight the need for greater articulation regarding intended program outcomes as well as program theorising regarding the underlying mechanisms that connect program activities and outputs with said intended outcomes. Both evaluations also demonstrated the importance of prioritising collaboration at both the evaluation-level and the program-level to facilitate successful and robust program implementation. As such, this study also yields findings that speak to the beneficial role that the evaluative process itself can play in facilitating the evolution of CVE programming.

‘Real men’ doing dirty work: implications for change

ABSTRACT Police organisations in Canada and other parts of the world, have recently undertaken efforts to address misconduct arising from high-profile reports of internal discrimination and harassment and/or instances of excessive use of force. However, these actions tend to be pursued through traditional approaches without fully understanding the contextual factors that contribute to these harmful behaviours. Through a sequential, qualitative mixed-methods study involving Canadian police officers, this paper highlights how symbolic meanings attached to police work contribute to perceptions that the work is more suitable for some individuals than others. The findings also illustrate how officers respond to identity threats from stigmatised officers or from external sources. Finally, the findings suggest that the prototypical image of a police officer may be changing with recent criticisms of the police presented as possibilities for change.

Shedding Light on the Dark Figure of Police Mental Health Calls for Service

Abstract Recent discussions around police reform have acquired a significant degree of traction. Within these discussions have been calls to remove the police as primary responders to calls involving persons with perceived mental illness (PwPMI). While previous research shows that ∼1% of all calls for service involve PwPMI, limitations around police data recording practices likely mask the true proportion of PwPMI within and across calls for service. Accordingly, following manual review and text search of qualitative data appended to all calls for service made to a Canadian police service in 2019, we sought to identify the true proportion of calls for police service that involve PwPMI and predict the extent to which PwPMI are involved within and across different call classifications. Our findings reveal that while the ‘Mental Health’ call classification only comprised 0.9% (n = 397) of calls for service, PwPMI were in fact involved in 10.8% (n = 4,646) of calls. Furthermore, logistic regression models reveal that PwPMI are more likely to be involved in certain call classifications relative to others. Implications for police practice and reform are discussed.

A Friendly Police Supervision Model and Youth Violence Reduction in Northern Saskatchewan: Implications for Indigenous Policing in Canada

Indigenous policing has become a prominent concept which refers to an institutional transformation in the Canadian policing perspective based on the recognition of rights, respect, cooperation, and reconciliation. Despite increasing prominence of the Indigenous policing concept, there is limited scholarly attention to this area. Research can contribute to the efforts to develop culturally responsive and effective policing methods within Indigenous communities. The Northeast Youth Violence Reduction Partnership (NYVRP), a five-year pilot project (2015–2020), was implemented in three predominantly Indigenous communities in Northeastern Saskatchewan which have high police-reported crime rates to reduce offending among youth at risk for violence or gang involvement (n = 84). One of the main components of the NYVRP was the friendly supervision model of the police to maintain a positive relationship with youth rather than an adversarial relationship. To assess the achievements of the program, process and outcome evaluations were conducted. Findings provided evidence concerning the relevance of the friendly police supervision model with the overall goals of the program as well as the effectiveness of this model to reduce violence in the communities and indicated the ongoing need to develop better relationships between the police and Indigenous communities and youth. The evaluation findings on the process and impact of the program in terms of the policing components and the role of the police are shared and the implications of these findings for Indigenous policing approaches are discussed in light of best practices from other jurisdictions.

Cardiorespiratory Fitness of Police Recruits: Normative Reference Values and Temporal Trend.

Poirier, S, Houle, J, Lajoie, C, and Trudeau, F. Cardiorespiratory fitness of police recruits: normative reference values and temporal trend. J Strength Cond Res 37(1): 207-212, 2023-Several studies have highlighted the increased risk of cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) among police officers. Given the longitudinal association between cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) in early adulthood and later appearance of CVD, the identification of police recruits exhibiting lower CRF could allow the implementation of targeted CVD prevention strategies. Unfortunately, norm-referenced values for the CRF of Canadian police recruits are not yet available. Thus, this research aimed to provide norm-referenced values for the CRF of police recruits in the province of Quebec (Canada) and to evaluate the temporal trend in the CRF of police recruits over a 14-year period. First, a model was developed to estimate maximal oxygen consumption (V̇O2max) based on the results of the physical ability test (PAT) used for the recruitment of police officers in Quebec. Based on the previously developed model, the CRF of police recruits who completed the PAT from 2004 to 2017 was retrospectively assessed using administrative records. The analysis of 7,234 PAT results including 2,150 females (29.7%) and 5,084 males (70.3%) suggests that police recruits generally present high levels of CRF with an average estimated V̇O2max of 53.3 ml·min-1·kg-1 for males and 43.8 ml·min-1·kg-1 for females. Furthermore, our analyses showed significant but small positive correlations between estimated V̇O2max and time periods of PAT performance for male (rs = 0.105, p < 0.001) and female recruits (rs = 0.125, p < 0.001). Overall, our results suggest that the CRF of police recruits in Quebec is considerably higher than that of their North American peers.

Stress and the interpretation of ambiguous faces in police officers

ABSTRACT Fast and accurate decision-making are central in police officers’ duties. The processing of information relevant to inform decisions can be biased by the state of mind of officers, notably in the presence of stressful conditions. We sought to examine the link between different sources of stress and the presence of an interpretation bias in a task presenting ambiguous faces. A sample of 234 Canadian police officers took part in an online study measuring the number of stressful life events and the level of occupational stress. Participants were assigned to a stress-induced group or a control group. The stress induction was a challenging arithmetic task and the control task was a non-challenging arithmetic task. Participants indicated if the facial expression of 60 ambiguous faces was ‘negative’ or ‘positive’. The dependent measure was the mean number of positive interpretations. Perceived stress level, measured on a visual analogue scale, collected throughout the task indicated that the induction was successful. We found no difference in interpretations resulting from the stress induction. We did however find a significant negative correlation between the perceived stress measures and the interpretation of the faces; higher levels of perceived stress were associated with less positive interpretations. The number of stressful life events and occupational stress level were not associated with face interpretation. Paperwork and fatigue were reported as the most stressful aspects of the job by the officers, consistent with what has been found in studies conducted with police services worldwide. This study also highlights the relevance of perceived stress in police officers.

Algorithmic Policing Technologies in Canada

Canadian law enforcement agencies are applying algorithmic technologies to identify individuals at the regional, provincial, and federal levels. These technologies connect templated facial images to an array of informational fragments that are collected from databases scattered between the public and private sectors. While that is the case, these surveillance technologies continue to be authorized under SCC jurisprudence, as opposed to legislation enacted by Parliament. Algorithmic technologies collate and analyze disparate information from public and private databases to identify patterns, which are then used to generate formulas to ‘predict’ future trends. Kate Robertson and colleagues explain that implementation of APTs by Canadian police services holds serious deleterious potential for the Charter rights of Canadians, with consequences that disproportionately affect people of colour. Be that as it may, the most malevolent consequence of applying APTs may be their application of generalized formulas to generate recommendations used to intercept individuals based on biased and inaccurate information. Although not authorized by statute, surveillance technologies continue to be permissible under common law authorities. Richard Jochelson explains the inappropriate nature of this approach, arguing in the alternative that the court’s traditional role calls for application of the Oakes test to determine if state surveillant practices fall within its constitutional limits. Considering APT’s serious implications for Charter protected rights, this paper calls on legislators to implement dedicated legislation to govern the use of surveillant technologies in law enforcement, with a particular focus on regulating the use of APTs. Failure to do so risks an unprecedented expansion of prejudicial policing practices, which may act to crystallize the existing biases in law enforcement practices into objective ‘scientific’ outputs that may hold serious deleterious potential for Canada’s most vulnerable populations.

Bordering Justice: Place, Nation, and Boundary Making in Canadian Police Films

ABSTRACT This article analyzes Canadian law enforcement films that centrally depict police work in Canadian society. I analyze how these films depict the policing of cultural, territorial, and metaphorical boundaries and borders in addition to interrogating the causes and consequences of crime. I argue that borders in Canadian police films provide cultural spaces to (re)imagine relations between citizens and the state itself within a broader global order. Beginning with Hollywood films from the early 20th century that focused on the so-called colonial frontier, the analysis shifts to more recent Canadian films exploring new spaces and places in need of order and control. From the colonial West to urban centers to new virtual territories in cyberspace, Canadian police films constitute a popular criminology interrogating the causes, consequences, and just responses to crime on the borderlands of Canadian society.