Chapter 3 – History of Policing in Canada (Notes)

History and Purpose of Policing in Canada – Study Notes

History of Policing in Canada

A. Early Provincial and Urban Policing

  • Security arrangements varied across Canada in the early settlement period:

    • Settlers relied on informal volunteers for policing and security.

    • Indigenous groups used negotiation, restoration, and healing practices in conflict resolution.

  • As cities grew, policing adapted to local needs and imported practices:

    • Coasts: guarding coastal waters.

    • Hudson Bay: protecting Company interests.

    • Growing cities adopted British legislation and policing practices.

    • Policing operated as a form of consent policing in some contexts (see below).

  • Key idea: early policing was decentralized, informal, and tied to both settler interests and Indigenous governance practices.

B. Federal Policing

  • Dominion Police established in 1858 to police eastern Canada and counteract insurgency; later roles expanded.

  • North West Mounted Police (NWMP) established in 1873 to foster settlement, protect federal infrastructure, and quell labour disputes.

  • Visual/archival notes: historical imagery and media references illustrate policing roles in these eras (e.g., NWMP officers; labour dispute control).

C. Colonial Policing

  • Policing acted as a central agency of colonization.

  • Political/legal documents (e.g., the Indian Act) shaped relations between police and Indigenous Peoples.

  • Impact: policing systems embedded colonial power structures and legal frameworks that governed Indigenous communities.

Visual and cultural context

  • Kent Monkman, The Scream, 2016 (artwork reflecting Indigenous experiences and colonial histories).

  • Imagery of policing (e.g., RCMP actions) used to discuss legitimacy, force, and state power in colonial contexts.

Functions of Policing

Policing as a Social Practice (4 core functions)

1) Protection of elite interests

  • Protection of fur traders, Canadian industrialists, and settlers over Indigenous groups.
    2) Reinforcement of the status quo

  • Consent policing: police act in the public interest with the consent of citizens, supporting dominant religious/political groups; example cited involves white settlement and institutional backing.

  • Real-world example: RCMP involvement in Indigenous governance matters (e.g., arrest of Wet’suwet’en hereditary chief Freda Huson) illustrating enforcement aligned with state and settler interests.
    3) Control of marginalized groups

  • Ensuring Indigenous children go to residential schools (racialization).

  • Controlling labour disputes and dissidents during war times.
    4) Order maintenance

  • Accumulation of functions 1–3 to prevent all types of disorder and maintain social order.

  • Historical artefacts (e.g., Winnipeg General Strike mural) illustrate collective actions and policing responses.

Cultural portrayals and time-use

  • Police shootings: fiction often portrays officers as engaging with dangerous, violent individuals; factual data show the majority of people shot by police have mental health issues.

  • Time use: common misconception that police spend most time investigating violent crime; reality: about 75\% on order maintenance calls and 25\% on law enforcement tasks.

  • This reframes policing as often preventive and reactive to everyday social order issues rather than exclusively crime-fighting.

Contemporary Types of Policing

A. Professionalized Policing (1870–1970)

  • Aimed at standardizing, bureaucratizing, and formalizing recruitment and training.

  • The 3 Rs of traditional policing:

    • ext{Random patrol}

    • ext{Rapid response}

    • ext{Reactive investigation}

  • Critiques of professionalized policing:

    • Insular and suspicious of communities; disconnected from the daily realities of people’s lives.

    • More about using force than preventing crime; reactionary rather than preventive.

    • Perceived detachment from community needs.

B. Community/Proactive Policing

  • Policing that views crime as a solvable problem, not merely incidents to react to.

  • Focuses on 3 Ps:

    • Prevention – rejects random patrol and incident-driven responses.

    • Problem solving – creative approaches to prevent and solve crime.

    • Partnerships – working with communities rather than enforcing on them.

  • Example practice: community policing initiatives and youth engagement (e.g., positive programs).

  • SARA model (a structured problem-solving approach) involves four steps:

    • S—Scan to identity the problem

    • A—Analyze and understand the problem

    • R—Develop a Response

    • A—Assess the effectiveness of the plan

  • Flow of the SARA model: S → A → R → A (cyclical process to continually refine interventions).

C. Law and Order Policing

  • Broken windows thesis: disorder in a community can lead to crime; addressing visible disorder can prevent more serious crime.

  • Practices used to deal with disorder include:

    • Stop and Frisk

    • Carding

    • Hot Spot Policing

    • Intelligence-Led Policing

    • Militarized policing

Discussion prompts

  • What model of policing do you think works best to control crime: Professionalized, Community, or Law and Order?

  • In terms of the broken windows theory, is more policing the best way to manage areas that appear “broken down”? What else could help? Are the police cracking down on crime, or something else?

Differential Policing

Differential policing concepts

  • Policing based on social hierarchy (race, sex, social class, geography).

  • Over-policing: Groups that experience disproportionate police attention due to attributes such as age, race, or community type.

  • Under-policing: Offences that receive insufficient police surveillance and intervention; some harms are extensive yet under-policed (e.g., certain corporate crimes).

Over-policing examples and media references

  • Toronto police use more force against ethnic minorities (BBC/June 2022 reporting).

  • BBC coverage cited (June 2022) and related imagery detail disparities in policing by race/ethnicity.

Under-policing concerns

  • Corporate crimes and other non-traditional offenses may be under-investigated relative to their harm.

  • Legal framework: Bill C-45 (2000) is mentioned as an example of under-use or under-enforcement in certain contexts.

Summary

  • Policing is a social practice focused on maintaining social order as much as crime prevention.

  • It has deep historical roots in how Canada was established and in colonial relationships with Indigenous Peoples.

  • Policing reflects hierarchies of race and social class and is not evenly applied across populations or regions.

Key Terms and Concepts

  • Policing as a Social Practice: The historical and contemporary types, practices, and forms of policing used to ensure social order.

  • Garrotting Gangs: Groups of mostly young men who attacked individuals from behind, strangling them while others robbed victims.

  • Consent Policing: A policing approach based on prevention and minimum force, with police acting in public interest and with citizen consent.

  • Bobbie: Slang for English police officers in London, named after Sir Robert Peel.

  • Colonization: The act of taking control of land and resources; colonial policing refers to policing within this context.

  • Residential Schools: Government-sponsored religious boarding schools aimed at assimilating Indigenous children; oppressive with lasting harms.

  • Racialization: The systemic process of ascribing racial characteristics and differential treatment.

  • Professional Policing: A policing model emphasizing standardization, bureaucracy, and formalized recruitment/training.

  • Three Rs of Policing: ext{Random patrol}, ext{Rapid response}, ext{Reactive investigation}

  • Three Ps / Problem-Oriented Policing: ext{Prevention}, ext{Problem solving}, ext{Partnerships}

  • Community Policing: Views crime as a solvable problem and emphasizes community collaboration.

  • Indigenize: Integrating Indigenous practices into organizational practice.

  • Stop, Question, and Frisk: An intelligence-led practice of detaining and questioning individuals in high-crime areas, often with frisk for weapons.

  • Carding: Stopping and questioning individuals and requesting documentation without a specific offense.

  • Hot-Spot Policing: Concentrating policing where crime is most likely to occur.

  • Intelligence-Led Policing: Risk management and surveillance-based policing derived from data and risk assessment.

  • Broken Windows Thesis: Disorder signals and fosters further crime unless addressed.

  • Militarized Policing: Police adopts military-style weapons and strategies.

  • Differential Policing: Policing that creates different outcomes based on race, sex, class, etc.

  • Over-Policing: Disproportionate policing of certain groups.

  • Under-Policing: Insufficient policing of certain offenses or communities.

  • Residential Schools, Racialization, Indigenize: Core themes for understanding policing within Canada’s colonial and Indigenous contexts.

Chapter Objectives (from Page 3)

  • Summarize the social and political circumstances within which policing developed in Canada.

  • Outline four functions of policing.

  • Distinguish between professional, community, and law and order policing.

  • Distinguish between over- and under-policed communities in Canada.

Questions for Today’s Class (from Page 4)

  • What was the purpose of policing in Canada, historically?

  • What evidence of this history is present today?

  • Has the purpose of policing changed?