1: Policing and surveillance

In this session we will look at policing or surveillance as they arise generally, and not in relation to any specific criminal offence (the next 2 sessions will deal more specifically with the investigation and police powers). The police is a body empowered by the state to enforce the law and preserve order, something which they occasionally do by resorting to force. Police forces are relatively recent creations, the earliest, in Paris, dating back to the mid-17th Century. Over time, policing has evolved from relying on volunteer constables and "watchmen" towards professional, highly specialized forces. Because of the use of force by the police, it is a very sensitive area of state power from the point of view of rights. In this session, we will focus in particular on policing generally, looking at stopping powers, the practice of carding, efforts at shifting policing towards communities, and the rise of predictive policing as part of the surveillance state. The goal of the session will be to assess the degree to which policing as such might raise concerns for human rights. Under the Charter several rights are potentially implicated including the right to be free from arbitrary detention (section 9) or the right to privacy. At the same time, the Supreme Court must weigh the needs of policing against the expectation of freedom of Canadians. Efforts have been made into making policing closer to the community or more preventive, but in the course of such efforts, a greater intrusiveness may be justified. In addition, policing is a particularly sensitive area when it comes to racial, particularly structural discrimination.

Further Readings:

• • Tim Newburn, Mike Maguire, Rod Morgan, and Reiner Robert. “Policing and the Police.” In Oxford Handbook of Criminology. Oxford University Press, 2007, pages 910-937.

  • Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, GUIDANCE FOR THE USE OF BODY-WORN CAMERAS BY LAW ENFORCEMENT AUTHORITIES

  • Christopher Slobogin, “An Empirically-Based Analysis of American and European Regulatory Approaches to Police Investigation” (2002) 23 Michigan Journal of International Law, 423 (extract).

  • Savage, David. “Supreme Court Gives Police More Power to Stop and Question People.” Los Angeles Times, June 20, 2016.

  • Stuart, Forrest. “Becoming ‘Copwise’: Policing, Culture, and the Collateral Consequences of Street-Level Criminalization.” Law & Society Review 50, no. 2 (June 1, 2016): 279–313. doi:10.1111/lasr.12201.

  • Godfrey, Barry, and David J. Cox. Policing the Factory: Theft, Private Policing and the Law in Modern England. A&C Black, 2013.

  • Hubbard, Phil. “Out of Touch and out of Time? The Contemporary Policing of Sex Work.” Sex Work Now, 2006, 1–32.

  • Levi, Michael. “Policing Financial Crimes.” International Handbook of White-Collar and Corporate Crime, 2007, 588–606.

  • Madan, Gita Rao. “Policing in Toronto Schools: Race-Ing the Conversation.” University of Toronto (Canada), 2016.

  • Monaghan, Jeffrey. “Putting the State on Trial: The Policing of Protest during the G20 Summit Ed. by Margaret E. Beare, Nathalie Des Rosiers, and Abigail C. Deshman.” Labour/Le Travail 76, no. 1 (2015): 243–245.

  • Sheptycki, James. “‘In There Like a Dirty Shirt’: Reflections on Fieldwork in the Police Organization.” In Illegal Entrepreneurship, Organized Crime and Social Control, 343–357. Springer, 2016.

  • Bediako, Geremy. “The Unexpected Experience: Positive Minority Perceptions and Experiences of Policing.” Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa, 2017.

  • Codd, Helen. In the Shadow of Prison: Families, Imprisonment and Criminal Justice. Routledge, 2013.

  • Kyres, Maria. “From the Yonge Street Riot to the Carding Controversy: Policing and Surveilling the Black Community in Toronto, Canada, 1992-2016,” 2017.

  • Li-ming, H. A. N. “Discussion on Britain’s Neighbourhood Policing and Our Community Policing.” Journal of Shanghai Police College 6 (2006): 002.

  • Saberi, Parastou. “Toronto and the ‘Paris Problem’: Community Policing in ‘immigrant Neighbourhoods.’” Race & Class 59, no. 2 (2017): 49–69.

  • Tanovich, David M., and Donald R. Stuart. “Comment on R v K (A): Carding, Racial Profiling and Police Perjury,” n.d.

  • Meng, Yunliang. “Racially Biased Policing and Neighbourhood Characteristics: A Case Study in Toronto, Canada.” Cybergeo: European Journal of Geography, 2014.

  • Sanders, Teela, Jane Scoular, Rosie Campbell, Jane Pitcher, and Stewart Cunningham. “Policing Online Sex Markets.” In Internet Sex Work, 121–151. Springer, 2018.

  • Sheptycki, James. Contemporary Reflections on the History of Canadian Policing–Reading The Vigilant Eye; Policing Canada from 1867 to 9/11. Taylor & Francis, 2017.

  • Singh, Knia. “All about Colour,‘nothing Else,’” 2015.

  • Beck, Charlie, and Colleen McCue. “Predictive Policing: What Can We Learn from Wal-Mart and Amazon about Fighting Crime in a Recession?” Police Chief 76, no. 11 (2009): 18.

  • Ferguson, Andrew Guthrie. “Predictive Policing and Reasonable Suspicion,” 2012.

  • Friend, Zach. “Predictive Policing: Using Technology to Reduce Crime.” FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin 82, no. 4 (2013).

  • Greengard, Samuel. “Policing the Future.” Communications of the ACM 55, no. 3 (2012): 19–21.

  • Haberman, Cory P., and Jerry H. Ratcliffe. “The Predictive Policing Challenges of near Repeat Armed Street Robberies.” Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice 6, no. 2 (2012): 151–166.

  • Hunt, Priscillia, Jessica Saunders, and John S. Hollywood. Evaluation of the Shreveport Predictive Policing Experiment. Rand Corporation, 2014.

  • Mohler, George O., Martin B. Short, Sean Malinowski, Mark Johnson, George E. Tita, Andrea L. Bertozzi, and P. Jeffrey Brantingham. “Randomized Controlled Field Trials of Predictive Policing.” Journal of the American Statistical Association 110, no. 512 (2015): 1399–1411.

  • Pearsall, Beth. “Predictive Policing: The Future of Law Enforcement.” National Institute of Justice Journal 266, no. 1 (2010): 16–19.

  • Perry, Walt L. Predictive Policing: The Role of Crime Forecasting in Law Enforcement Operations. Rand Corporation, 2013.

  • Uchida, Craig D. A National Discussion on Predictive Policing: Defining Our Terms and Mapping Successful Implementation Strategies. National Institute of Justice Los Angeles, 2009.