NCJ Number
108182
Date Published
1982
Length
8 pages
Annotation
An examination of issues critical to the Canadian criminal justice system's future, particularly in regard to public and private law enforcement, concludes that a preventive policing policy would be more effective.
Abstract
Police control entrance into the criminal justice system by how they process cases and the manpower they allocate to particular crimes. Political discretion has organized police forces and private security with a bias toward overt predatory crime and away from clandestine fraud and corruption. The enforcement bias is toward the poor, sick, unemployed, uneducated, and inadequately housed, sick and away from nonviolent crime committed by the professional managerial group. Questions are raised and recommendations made about future research on policing the elite, effective control of the police, enforcement, and punishment. An effective method of policing elite groups will promote greater efficiency and prevent the encroachment of a totalitarian system. Police forces capable of enforcement across all socioeconomic lines can only be controlled by an independent investigation and adjudication process in response to complaints of alleged abuse. Moreover, the punitive aspect of the criminal justice system will need reevaluation when law enforcement has a capability quotient covering the entire socioeconomic spectrum of offenders. Political commitment to finding a different means of promotion to the policymaking ranks in police forces, rather than the current method of serving in menial watch-patrol functions, is needed. The limited range of the enforcement function must be recognized, and a preventive policing policy will have to dominate. Changes in enforcement policy and pretrial diversion would relieve courts of trivial enforcement activity and allow time and money to be spent on litigating more difficult cases. 9 footnotes.