CrimSL faculty and students returned recently from the annual conference of the Western Society of Criminology Conference in Long Beach, California.
The event was held February 8-10, 2024. The final program is available here.
CrimSL Professors Julius Haag, Julian Tanner, and Scot Wortley, and PhD students Jessica T. Bundy, Kadija Osei, Roksolyana Shlapak, and Jeffrey Wong contributed research presentations and participated in discussions at WSC2024.
Presentation abstracts are shown below.
Black Perceptions of the Police in Atlantic Canada - Jessica T. Bundy
WSC2024 Panel 11: Experiences and Perceptions of Crime and Justice, February 9, 2024.
African Nova Scotian communities have been perpetually impacted by acts of state violence, silence, and oversight as Canada's oldest and largest multigenerational Black community This paper draws from broader work examining how this particular community of Black Canadians - the historic African Nova Scotian community - experience, perceive, and cope with anti-Black racism relative to the police. Using interviews done with African Nova Scotians, direct and second-hand experiences of the police are examined through the lens of race, gender, and age. The research also elucidates the varying range of experience within African Nova Scotian community encounters with police and the ways in which these experiences impact understandings of safety. This paper addresses a dearth of qualitative data on Black Canadian experiences with police by contributing substantive interview collection and data analysis.
The Untold Stories of Canadian Black Lives: Faith and Former Prisoner Reintegration - Kadija Osei
WSC2024 Panel 13: Considerations in Community Based Corrections Practices, February 9, 2024.
Former inmate re-entry for Black people in Canada has become an urgent social and political issue over the past decade, especially in Toronto. The Office of the Correctional Investigator states that, "Black inmates are one of the fastest growing sub-populations in federal corrections" (Sapers, 2013). Yet, there is a lack of Canadian literature on the community reintegration of these former inmates. How do Black men, who are former inmates, in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) understand and describe their reintegration experience, post-release? This paper explores this question using semi-structured qualitative data from 42 Black men (aged 25-45) who were or are currently incarcerated and 10 community leaders that serve these men. The results show that there is a lack of culturally specific reintegration programs available at the federal, provincial, and municipal level. The programs that exist are general and do not effectively address the individual, familial, community and structural barriers to reintegration, faced by Black men. Theoretical and policy implications are discussed.
"It Won't Do No Good." Reasons for Not Reporting Violent Crime Among Disadvantaged Toronto Youth - Julius Haag, Scot Wortley, Julian Tanner, Kadija Osei, Jessica Bundy
WSC2024 Panel 27: The Juvenile Justice System and Justice Involved Youth, February 9, 2024.
This paper explores the extent to which youth from disadvantaged Toronto neighbourhoods (N=641) witness violent crime - including gun crime - and report these incidents to the police. The results indicate that most respondents do not or would not report violent crime. Reasons for non-reporting include a lack of confidence in the police, a belief that the police cannot or will not protect witnesses, fear of the offenders, fear of being labelled a snitch, and a desire not to become involved in the court process. Many feel that cooperating with police investigations will not lead to justice and only make them more vulnerable to victimization, community ridicule, and police harassment. Other respondents de-valued the victims of violent crime, claiming that they would report crimes involving "innocent" victims but not crimes involving known criminals. Policy implications are discussed.
Good Cop, Bad Cop: Positive and Negative Experiences with the Police Perceived Police Legitimacy - Scot Wortley, Roksolyana Shlapak, Jeff Wong, Julian Tanner
WSC2024 Panel 44: Police Interactions with the Community, February 10, 2024.
This paper explores how perceptions of police legitimacy are impacted by direct experiences with law enforcement. Data are drawn from interviews with disadvantaged Toronto youth (N=641). Most respondents report both positive and negative experiences with the police. Positive experiences include interactions with School Resource Officers, assistance following victimization, interactions during community policing events, lenient treatment when caught breaking the law, and respectful treatment following arrest. Negative experiences include police stop and search activities, verbal abuse, threats, physical assault, false arrest, and inadequate responses to criminal victimization. Multivariate analysis reveals that negative experiences with the police have a much greater impact on perceived police legitimacy than positive experiences. The paper concludes by arguing that, to improve youth confidence in law enforcement, the police would benefit more from reducing negative/unnecessary police-civilian encounters than by increasing positive encounters through community policing.