Structural Determinants of Municipal Police Force Size in Large Cities Across Canada

• Author: Stephanie L. Kent,Jason T. Carmichael
• Date: 01 September 2015
• DOI: 10.1177/1057567715586833
• Published date: 01 September 2015
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Structural Determinants of

Municipal Police Force Size in

Large Cities Across Canada:

Assessing the Applicability of

Ethnic Threat Theories in the

Canadian Context

Jason T. Carmichael

1

and Stephanie L. Kent

2

Abstract

Substantial theoretical and empirical attention has been directed at isolating the structural condi-

tions that lead to shifts in the size of metropolitan police departments in the United States. These

studies rely heavily on ethnic and racial threat explanations, which imply that larger police forces will

be employed in jurisdictions with larger minority populations. It is entirely unclear, though, whether

such accounts are applicable outside the United States. This study fills this void in the literature by

assessing the extent to which ethnic threat hypotheses can explain variations in police strength using

data on 40 large Canadian cities from 1996 to 2006. Results show that the size of the minority

population significantly influences the size of metropolitan police departments.

Keywords

police organization/management, law enforcement/security, race and crime/justice, other, critical

criminology, crime/delinquency theory

Introduction

Over the past several decades, the Canadian population has seen a dramatic expansion in immi-

gration that has, in many ways, changed the face of the country. Recent migrants have been much

more ethnically and culturally diverse than previous waves of immigrants. Census data show, for

example, that in 1960, only 3.2%of the Canadian population had family ancestry originating from

a country outside Europe or the United States (Statistics Canada, 1961), whereas today that number

1

Department of Sociology, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

2

Department of Sociology and Criminology, Cleveland State University, Cleveland, OH, USA

Corresponding Author:

Jason T. Carmichael, Department of Sociology, McGill University, 855 Sherbrooke St. West, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

H3A2T7.

Email: jason.carmichael@mcgill.ca

International CriminalJustice Review

2015, Vol. 25(3) 263-280

ª2015 Georgia State University

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DOI: 10.1177/1057567715586833

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is 20%(Statistics Canada, 2011). In fact, 2 of every 10 people living in Canada today were born

outside the country, the highest proportion among the G8 countries and the fifth highest in the world,

with most coming from Asia (including the Middle East), Africa, and Latin America (Statistics

Canada, 2011; World Migration Report, 2010). While conventional perceptions of Canada suggest

widespread tolerance and even the celebration of such sizable and rapid shifts in the ethnic makeup

of the society, evidence from social science research is beginning to seriously challenge this assump-

tion. Despite constitutional guarantees against discrimination based on race, national or ethnic ori-

gin, color, religion, and many other categories, disparities in a variety of important socioeconomic

indicators exist between majority group members and ethnic minorities in Canada. Substantial evi-

dence shows, for example, that visible minorities face discrimination in the labor market (e.g., Hou

& Coulombe, 2010; Pendakur & Pendakur, 2011; Skuterud, 2010), disparities in health outcomes

including a greater likelihood of chronic health conditions and increased rates of depression (Ali,

McDermott, & Gravel, 2004; Perez, 2002), in housing (Hogan & Berry, 2011). Together, these stud-

ies reflect the growing evidence that ethnic minorities experience a number of consequential forms

of discrimination in Canada.

A relatively small body of literature has also explored the extent to which discriminatory prac-

tices against ethnic minorities may have been introduced into the Canadian criminal justice system

(see Wortley, 2003 for elaboration). The primary cause of such limited scholarship is what effec-

tively amounts to a ban on the collection and/or release of race-specific crime or justice statistics

(for elaboration, see Millar & Owusu-Bempah, 2011; Wortley, 1999, 2003). Despite this limitation,

research suggests that ethnic minorities face discrimination at multiple points in the criminal justice

system from involvement with police, to bail, and sentencing. Studies have shown that members of

some ethnic minority groups (particularly Aboriginals and Blacks) are much more likely to be

stopped and searched by the police than majority group members even after accounting for criminal

involvement and other risk factors (Fitzgerald & Carrington, 2011; Wortley & Owusu-Bempah,

2011; Wortley & Tanner, 2003). This heightened police attention of ethnic minorities has contrib-

uted to their disproportionate involvement at higher levels of the criminal justice chain. Evidence

shows, for instance, that minority group members in Canada have higher arrest rates (Wortley,

1999), and research suggests that they are overrepresented in incidents in which police use lethal

and nonlethal forces (Pedicelli, 1998). When visible minorities face the courts, they appear to

receive similar treatment. Empirical studies have shown that ethnic minorities are more likely to

be denied bail (Kellough & Wortley, 2002; Roberts & Doob, 1997) and have a greater chance of

being sentenced to prison (Roberts & Doob, 1997) even after relevant factors including the serious-

ness of the offense and prior criminal involvement have been taken into account. Given such evi-

dence, it is not surprising that survey research has consistently shown that ethnic minorities in

Canada view the criminal justice system much more negatively than the majority group members

(e.g., Bowling & Phillips, 2002; Cao, 2011; Wortley, 1999).

Yet, despite such attention to ethnic discrimination in the Canadian criminal justice system at the

individual level, few studies have attempted to ascertain whether or not communities, in the aggre-

gate, are responding to fears about rising ethnic minority presence by strengthening criminal justice

apparatuses. In particular, no study in Canada has examined whether the presence of a large minority

population contributes to the size of metropolitan police departments across the country. The lack of

scholarly input on this topic should be rectified for two important reasons. First, the evidence out-

lined previously suggests that minorities living in communities with greater police presence will be

subjected to greater surveillance and subsequent criminal justice involvement. Thus, aggregate

expansion in law enforcement in jurisdictions with more minorities may be the source of minority

group overrepresentation in the criminal justice system.

Second, while conventional explanations for changes in the size of local police departments point

to rational assessments of factors such as crime rates, population, or budgetary shifts, a rather sizable

264 International Criminal Justice Review 25(3)