Reconstituting social order and social control: Police accountability in Canada

“A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard” (Revd. Martin Luther King, 1967)

Abstract

Despite the important role which the police play in the reproduction of social order, there is a lacuna in critical criminological literature on the policing of democratic societies. As a consequence, the mistaken impression is fostered that policing in Canada is not problematic. This paper challenges this view, documenting the extent of police malpractice and raising the question of the need for police accountability. Within this context the authors discuss three forms which police accountability has historically taken: judicial inquiry, community police monitoring groups, and consultative liaison panels. One problem which the authors note is the way in which all three models depend upon the police for information about the nature of crime and policing, making them susceptible to dominant discourses about policing. Thus they continue by discussing the left realist model as potentially a fourth model. This form of police accountability emerged in Britain during the 1980s and is characterized by the production of an alternative discourse on crime and police practices based on locally conducted and controlled victimization surveys. The extent to which this practice of police accountability might be relevant to the Canadian context remains yet to be explored. The authors note in closing, however, that this is an empirical and not a theoretical question, meaning that Canadian criminologists must become more practical and less academic in their discourses of social control.