LEAP Conference (March 11) - Accessing Justice and Accountability in Policing

On March 11, 2011, Windsor Law School will be hosting LEAP's first conference -- Accessing Justice and Accountability in Policing. The conference is designed to explore and assess the various mechanisms to enhance access to justice in policing. These mechanisms include data collection, Charter and civil litigation, human rights collaborations, listening to voices at the margins and law school clinics.

The conference is free to attend and open to everyone. If you would like to attend, please register here.

A podcast of the conference will be available on the LEAP website for those who cannot attend.

There is an essay contest open to all law students in Canada. There is a $1,000 prize and possible publication in the conference book. For more information, click here.

In preparation for the conference, LEAP students have prepared a bibliography of academic articles related to the topics of the conference. To access the bibliography, click here.

Over the next few weeks, LEAP students will be posting pieces on the LEAP Blog relevant to the conference.

Racial profiling in Paris

A recent report entitled Profiling Minorities: A Study of Stop-And-Search Practices in Paris has been released by the Open Society Justice Initiative. The report details a study which began in 2007. It sough to investigate whether law enforcement officers were stopping individuals because of their appearance, or engaging in “ethnic profiling.” The results of the study revealed that police stops and identity checks in Paris are not based on the behaviour of the stopped individual, but most often based on their appearance. Ethnic minorities were stopped by police at a considerably more significant rate than those not perceived to be ethnic minorities.

The report states that “[i]n targeting certain persons because of what they look like and not because of what they have done, law enforcement officers justify and perpetuate ethnic stereotypes.” The report also discussed the negative way in which this reflects on the accountability and transparency of law enforcement officers, “decreasing their effectiveness in preventing and detecting crime.”

The report made several recommendations. To political and legal authorities, it recommended that they acknowledge the problem of ethnic profiling, encourage and fund ethnic profiling research, review legal standards, modify areas of the Code of Criminal procedure and maintain and support specialized police oversight bodies. To French law enforcement authorities, the report recommended, among other things, that officers be required to explain why they are stopping those they stop, to regularly analyze stop records, to make public statistical data on identity checks, stops and searches and to introduce tools to receive public feedback regarding the quality of police services.

Posted by Ashley Paterson (Law II) (LEAP Summer Intern)

NDP introduce private member's bill to ban racial profiling in Canada

NDP Press Release

Thu 04 Jun 2009

OTTAWA - Bill Siksay (Burnaby-Douglas) has again tabled in the House of Commons a Private Member’s Bill that seeks to ban racial and religious profiling by federal law enforcement agencies and officials.

The bill is in response to concerns raised about the practice of racial and religious profiling, and stems from consultations held by the New Democrats during the 38th and 39th Parliaments. It requires federal law enforcement agencies to ban racial and religious profiling and report to Parliament on their actions, and requires agencies to do an analysis of how racism plays a role in the law enforcement context.

“Racial and religious profiling has been very serious and costly to those who have been its victims. Such actions by law enforcement officers and agencies are based solely on false stereotypes. It is bad public policy and bad law enforcement practice, plain and simple”, said Siksay. “This bill will ensure sound policy and procedure is developed and maintained by all federal law enforcement agencies.”

The bill was seconded by Libby Davies (Vancouver East) who tabled an earlier version of it in the 38th Parliament.

Canadian Human Rights Commission urges police forces to start collecting data on who and why they stop individuals for investigation

The Canadian Human Rights Commission and Canadian Race Relations Foundation issued a joint statement this week calling for Canadian police and security officials to start documenting who they stop for an investigation including tracking race, age and gender.

The call for such data collection follows the release of report commissioned for the Canadian Human Rights Commission entitled "The Effectiveness of Profiling from a National Security Perspective" which concludes that there is no evidence to support the reliability or moral legitimacy of profiling based on race or other prohibited grounds of discrimination.

The Ontario Human Rights Commission is already on record in support of race-based data collection by any institution or agency where there is evidence of racial profiling or other evidence of racial discrimination. See "Policy and Guidelines on Racism and Racial Discrimination" (Ontario Human Rights Commission, 2003) at 43-48.

Toronto Police Service to participate in study of racial profiling

In a precedent setting step, the Toronto Police Service have agreed to participate in an American study of policing to be conducted by the Consortium for Police Leadership in Equity by providing the research group with data on race.

What remains uncertain is what race data the police will share. The problem with arrest data is that it only shows who is arrested not who comes into contact with the police. Hopefully, it will be contact cards and use of force data that is released. It is this data that will reveal the scope of over-policing of racialized groups in Toronto.

To date, the only police service in Canada to officially collect race data on police stops is the Kingston Police Service despite repeated calls by academics and the Ontario Human Rights Commission. The KPS launched a one-year pilot project in 2003. The Kingston experience is summarized in an article by its former Chief, Bill Closs, and Paul McKenna -- "Profiling a Problem in Canadian Police Leadership: the Kingston Police Data Collection Project" (2008), 49 Canadian Public Administration 143.

This is another significant step take by the Toronto Police Service to address the problem of racial profiling. In 2007, the TPS and the Ontario Human Rights Commission signed a Charter Project document which "formalized a three-year collaborative approach to human rights and anti-racism perspectives in all policing activities." In July, 2008, the first Annual Status Report of the Charter was published.

Posted by Professor Tanovich

Almost 1/3 of police charges get withdrawn or dismissed

According to recently released data by Statistics Canada on our adult criminal justice system, approximately 30% of charges laid by the police in 2006-2007 were either withdrawn by the Crown or dismissed or stayed by the courts.

Why is this happening? What role does race play? If a disproportionate number of these cases involve racialized individuals, then it would provide additional evidence of the scope of racial profiling. There is already some evidence that this is the case. In their 2008 series, Crime and Punishment, the Toronto Star uncovered data that reveals that racialized individuals are 53 percent more likely than Whites to be not convicted. No conviction is defined as (i) an acquittal; (ii) a withdrawal or stay of charges; and, (iii) a finding of guilt with a discharge on sentencing. See Rankin and Powell, "Is Justice System Blind to Colour" Toronto Star (21 July 2008).

One remedy is to have Crown Attorneys screen arrests before charges are laid. This is the current practice in British Columbia, Quebec and New Brunswick. See the discussion in McGoey, "The 'Good' Criminal Law Barrister: A Crown Perspective" (2004). In New Brunswick, only 16% of the cases were withdrawn or stayed as compared to 40% in Ontario where there is no pre-charge screening. While Ontario and other provinces have mandatory post-charge screening, the concern is the delay in review and timing of withdrawal.

Posted by Professor Tanovich

Toronto Police Service ordered to release data on police stops

In Toronto Police Services Board v. ( Ontario) Information and Privacy Commissioner, 2009 ONCA 20, the Ontario Court of Appeal restored a decision of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario granting Toronto Star reporter James Rankin access to Toronto Police Service’s data stored on the Criminal Information Processing System (CPIS) and the Master Name Index (MANIX). Rankin wanted the information to follow up on his 2002 series on racial profiling and had applied for access by relying on s. 2(1) of the Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. M. 56 (“the Act”). As noted in the judgment "his purpose in seeking the information is to test the Board's claim, in response to an earlier series of articles he wrote, that the Police do not engage in racial profiling."

The Toronto Police argued that they did not need to release the information because it was not a “record” within the meaning of the Act, and that even if it could be deemed a record, that it would be too costly to produce as it would require their staff to create an algorithm in order to free the database of personal identifiers.

The Court rejected these arguments, applying a broad interpretation of s. 2(1) of the Act, in arguing that this “approach – one of presumptive access – reflects the fact that, because municipal institutions function to serve the public, they ought in general to be open to public scrutiny.”

Posted by Laroux Peoples

LAPD rejects statistical evidence of racial profiling

In October of 2008, the ACLU of Southern California released a report entitled Racial Profiling & the LAPD: A Study of Racially Disparate Outcomes in the Los Angeles Police Department. The report examined 700,000 cases involving LAPD stops of pedestrians and drivers between July 2003 and June 2004. The study was conducted by Professor Ian Ayres, an economist and law professor at Yale Law School.

After controlling for violent and property crime rates in specific neighbourhoods and other relevant factors, Ayres found that Blacks and Latinos were far more likely to be stopped, frisked and searched than Whites. A critical finding of the study was that the disparity cannot be explained by differential crime rates. Blacks were 42% less likely to be in possession of a weapon after being frisked; 23% less likely to be in possession of drugs; and, 25% less likely to be in possession of other contraband than Whites. Latinos were 32% less likely to be in possession of a gun after being frisked; 34% less likely to be in possession of a gun; and, 12% less likely to be in possession of other contraband than Whites.

The report also found that over the last five years, the LAPD has received approximately 1,200 complaints alleging racial profiling. All 1,200 cases were found to be unsubstantiated.

Despite the findings, LAPD Chief William Bratton appeared before the civilian commission two weeks ago and disputed the accuracy of the data claiming that the LAPD does not engage in racial profiling. In a commentary, "The LAPD and Racial Profiling", published in the Los Angeles Times shortly after the release of the study, Professor Ayres defended his findings.

Posted by Professor Tanovich