Rick Ruddell

Policing isolated Aboriginal communities: perspectives of Canadian officers

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to compare the self‐reported attitudes toward Aboriginal policing of officers in isolated/remote communities with those from accessible Aboriginal communities.Design/methodology/approach – Survey results are reported for 294 officers working in Aboriginal communities throughout Canada.Findings – Officers working in remote jurisdictions tended to be younger, better educated, and had less policing experience than those working in non‐isolated Aboriginal communities. Social problems in these remote communities were thought to be more serious than those reported by officers working in accessible Aboriginal communities. Despite these demographic and contextual differences, self‐reported attitudes toward Aboriginal policing were generally similar, although officers working in isolated communities tended to report more conservative views on enforcement.Research limitations/implications – The generalizability of the results is limited by the modest (40.7 percent) response ra...

Canadian Female Gang Inmates: Risk, Needs, and the Potential for Prison Rehabilitation

A comparison of the characteristics of 337 Canadian adult female gang offenders with a matched sample of women offenders showed that they were more likely to have been sentenced for violent offenses, had a greater number of prior youth and criminal convictions, and served prior terms of incarceration. Gang members were also assessed as having higher overall needs and risks, lower levels of motivation for change, and a higher risk of recidivism. An important first step in developing rehabilitative programs to respond to their needs is to better understand these attributes. Gang management strategies should also be informed by what the research tells us about these gang members.

Social media and policing: matching the message to the audience

Purpose – This research aimed to explore the characteristics of respondents who accessed a municipal police services webpage or social media (Facebook or Twitter). Perceptions about the usefulness of social media in policing were solicited from the respondents.Design/methodology/approach – Several survey items about social media were included in a study of trust and confidence in policing that was collected in two waves: a random telephone sample of 504 community residents and 314 university students.Findings – One in five respondents had accessed the police services webpage, while 6.9 percent had accessed their Twitter feed and 5.4 percent had viewed their Facebook site. Social media users tended to be younger and better educated while respondents over 65 years of age rarely accessed these tools. Younger respondents reported that computer‐based methods of communication were useful whether they had accessed these services or not. Older non‐users, by contrast, saw little future value in social media. Chi...

Determinants of Police Strength in Canadian Cities: Assessing the Impact of Minority Threat

L’argument de la menace des minorités veut que la taille des populations minoritaires soit positivement corrélée aux taux de contrôle social structuré. De récentes études effectuées dans d’autres pays ont démontré un lien évident et constant entre la taille des populations subordonnées, le nombre de policiers et le montant des dépenses liées aux services de police. Cette étude examine les liens entre six indicateurs de populations minoritaires, le ratio de policiers par rapport aux résidents et les dépenses liées aux services de police par habitant, et ce, dans les plus grandes villes canadiennes. Contrairement aux résultats récents d’études américaines, allemandes et espagnoles, les indicateurs de l’hétérogénéité des populations n’étaient pas associés significativement aux effectifs policiers ou aux dépenses. Par contre, les taux de crimes violents rapportés à la police et la densité de la population étaient fortement associés aux effectifs policiers. Les effectifs policiers étaient aussi positivement corrélés aux villes qui possédaient des services de police municipaux, aux plus hauts taux de chômage et au taux d’électeurs conservateurs au cours d’élections provinciales. L’impact sur le développement de théories en matière de contrôle social structuré est examiné.

School Resource Officers in Financial Crisis: Which Programs Get Cut and Why

In recent years, K–12 education programs throughout the United States have been impacted by budget reductions, particularly in areas that are outside of traditional academic programs. Anecdotal evidence suggests that one of the areas receiving the greatest reductions may be school safety programs. In this article, we use data from school resource officers (SROs) in Kentucky to examine the types of SRO activities that are impacted by budget reductions and the school- and county-level factors associated with those budget reductions. The findings presented here suggest that SRO training and equipment are most impacted by budget cuts; SROs are more likely to serve more than one school in times of budget reductions as well. Results from multivariate logistic regression models suggest a web of economic factors that impact which SRO programs receive budget reductions, including a countys poverty rate, median household income, and population change. Implications for policy and future research are discussed.

Creating Hope for Life-Sentenced Offenders

Offenders sentenced to terms of life imprisonment pose special challenges for correctional systems. The Correctional Service of Canada collaborated with nongovernmental agencies to develop programmatic interventions to better prepare this population to survive their prison sentences and transition to the community. This study describes the characteristics of the Canadian lifer population and illustrates how the LifeLine program, first introduced in 1991, has contributed to low rates of recidivism using National Parole Board statistics from 1994 to 2009. The fact that so many life-imprisoned offenders make a successful transition to the community suggests that not only is this program effective, but that the risk to public safety has been carefully managed. Implications for the management of this growing population of offenders are discussed.

Officer Perceptions of Canada's ‘First Nations Policing Program’

This study examined the perceptions of service delivery and attitudes towards the First Nations Policing Program (FNPP) of 434 sworn officers working in Aboriginal communities. Officers working for self-administered police services (operated by First Nations) were less optimistic about both the effectiveness of service delivery and whether the goals of the FNPP were being met when compared with members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), who provided contract policing to these communities. These results suggest that officer experiences in policing, where they work, their demographic characteristics, as well as their organisational affiliation may shape their perspectives on policing. Implications for future research on Aboriginal, Indigenous and Tribal policing are outlined.

‘Set up to fail?’ An analysis of self-administered indigenous police services in Canada

Abstract In 1992 the First Nations Policing Program (FNPP) was introduced in order for Indigenous peoples in Canada to establish their own self-administered police services. The intent of the FNPP was for Indigenous communities to work toward self-determination and their residents to receive professional and culturally appropriate policing. Like other criminal justice interventions, there was a disconnection between the vision and the actual operation of these agencies, thus over one-third of these fledgling police services disbanded. Even today, many of these First Nations police services are struggling. Police officials report their agencies were intentionally ‘set up to fail’ and this study critiques that proposition. We find these agencies are hamstrung by a lack of funding, suffer from the disadvantage of size, struggle to meet the demands of high crime and community dysfunction, and are delivering a less culturally-appropriate service today than provided when the program was first established years.

Aboriginal Policing in Rural Canada: Establishing a Research Agenda

Canada’s First Nations Policing Program (FNPP) provides the funding and programmatic structure for policing 535 rural Aboriginal communities. After two decades and almost three billion (CA) dollars in expenditures, however, there has been comparatively little scholarly assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of this approach to policing. This study highlights the current state of the FNPP and we find that most government funded research has focused upon the administrative goals of the FNPP while relatively little government or scholarly attention has been paid to program outcomes. We identified three broad needs for Aboriginal policing research in Canada, including; (a) developing a research based inventory of best practices in rural and Aboriginal policing; (b) examining the efficacy of plural policing; and (c) how the study of Aboriginal policing can inform organizational theory. Each of these issues has implications for the development of research, practice, policy, and theory, and ultimately, ensuring just and fair outcomes concerning public safety for Canada’s Aboriginal peoples.

The prison adjustment of Aboriginal offenders

This study examined the misconduct of all 18,075 Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal offenders admitted to Canadian federal prisons between 2006 and 2009. We found that Aboriginal prisoners had a higher involvement in incidents of major and minor misconduct than their non-Aboriginal counterparts. Consistent with prior prison research, younger prisoners, males, and those with higher levels of risk and dynamic needs had higher involvement in misconduct as perpetrators. By contrast, prisoners who had participated in violence reduction or substance abuse programs were involved in fewer incidents. Both gang involvement and victimization were also robust predictors of prison misconduct. These findings can guide the development of programmatic responses to help offenders develop better skills to adjust to their incarceration and successfully reintegrate in the community following release from prison. Consistent with the Statistics Canada (2013) definition, Aboriginal refers to persons who are Status Indians, Métis peoples (people of mixed Indian and other ethnicities) and Inuit peoples (persons from the far North).