Note
Research outline presented at the Summit on the Economics of Policing and Community Safety held in Ottawa, 2-4 March, 2015.
Issued also in French under the title: L’œil vigilant : les services de police au Canada de la Confédération au 11 septembre.
Author affiliated with: Department of History and Politics, University of New Brunswick Saint John.
Summary
"The police are a vital public service, gatekeepers to the criminal justice system and the most visible symbol, for the public, of that system. Crime statistics, for example, are commonly based on incidents reported to the police. A number of Canada’s urban police forces (inspired by the London Metropolitan Police of 1829) are nearly 200 years old and ‘territorial’ police services such as the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and provincial police (modeled on the Royal Irish Constabulary) predate Confederation. Apart from a few official histories, journalistic accounts and academic case studies, we know next to nothing about the operational history of ordinary policing in Canada. Important academic work has been produced on RCMP security and intelligence operations and on popular culture representations of the ‘Mounties,’ but very little on the force’s criminal policing role. The neglect of policing history is part of a larger problem: the lack of a basic institutional history of Canada’s justice system."