Public Safety Committee on Feb. 7th, 2013

[Rosane Doré Lefebvre, NDP, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

You talked about cooperation among various services, in particular medical services, and social and police services.

In your opinion, could this be useful in fighting street gangs? Could this contribute to keeping young people away from crime? Do you think we should emphasize that approach?

[Prof. Joseph Schafer]

Again, the evidence is not 100%. There are strategies that have been attempted that have not proven to be successful. There are a lot of strategies that have been successful in which by taking a more integrated collaborative approach towards matters of delinquency, gang activity, urban violence, substance abuse, and the needs of those with mental illness, we're not simply placing that responsibility on the shoulders of the police. Instead, involving police with other community, health, education, and outreach specialists can achieve very positive results. I think it's very important to explore non-traditional ways of thinking about how we might resolve those types of problems.

[Rosane Doré Lefebvre, NDP, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much, Dr. Schafer.

We'll now move to Mr. Payne, please, for seven minutes.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Professor, for sharing your knowledge with us.

I noted in your opening comments that you talked about something I call the best bang for the buck. I think you called it cost and value. You touched on an area of the Colorado Springs police. I think you said that was a good police force that was doing some excellent work. I know you're prepared to send some information, but I'm wondering about a couple of things.

First of all, could you give us a bit of detail on that?

Second, are you aware of other police forces that are sharing best practices and which ones are those? Would it be good for us here in Canada to look at those forces or at forces in another country that you might be aware of?

[Prof. Joseph Schafer]

Certainly. I would be better positioned to provide some other specific agencies once I have a chance to review some materials after today's session.

The one caution I would reiterate from my opening comments is that I think what we do know from the American experience tends to be with rather large or urban agencies, maybe not Chicago but a suburb of Chicago, from their agency and things like this. What we know about these matters in smaller jurisdictions, in more rural areas, and what might be effective or ineffective in first nations areas, I think, is another matter. We have to be cautious, both in the U.S. and I would suggest in Canada, about assuming that those experiences will transfer over.

As for the Colorado Springs experience, I had some opportunities to visit that community about a year and a half ago, and one of the issues they have wrestled with is a radical cut in budget and the cascading effect of a reduction in patrol personnel.

Their response has been to create alternative ways to handle common but low priority, what are often referred to as low solvability offences. Theft offences underneath a certain dollar value of loss, when there are no witnesses or forensic evidence, and those types of cases, regrettably, have an extremely low rate of being solved. Rather than dispatching a uniformed officer at the time an incident is reported, they are encouraging citizens instead to use a reporting website to call in and speak with an officer who might be on light duty at the police station and who will complete a report by phone. In their experience, these types of incidents can be handled without physically sending an officer in many situations. Although, I think even the personnel from that agency would caution that they have some trepidation that while perhaps they've done a good job and because of these strategies they've been able to ensure the patrol force can focus on serious and violent crime and keep those matters largely in check, there is some internal trepidation that perhaps that achievement regarding serious and violent crime has, to some extent, been at the sacrifice of doing a quality job of providing full service towards low level property offences.

I certainly can put your staff in contact with some of the folks I've worked with within that agency. I'm sure they would be happy to share some of their experiences with you further.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

Okay.

Are you aware of other organizations sharing best practices that could potentially benefit us?

[Prof. Joseph Schafer]

Yes, I think there are some efforts out there.The International Association of Chiefs of Police has done some work looking at this. The Police Executive Research Forum, or PERF, has put together some publications and has looked at some of these matters as well. I'm not sure, but, off the top of my head, I suspect the Police Foundation has explored this issue as well. Those would be three good starting points, although I'm quite confident there are other efforts that simply are not coming to my mind at this point.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

Okay.

Professor, could you describe current trends in crime rates in the U.S. and how they've affected the police forces’ services? Do you see any comparison with those in Canada?

[Prof. Joseph Schafer]

I think the crime rate in the last five years, in light of the economic downturn in this country, has defied what conventional criminological thinking would have suggested. At the onset of the recession, there was a great deal of discussion about the idea that we expected to see crime increase dramatically and that the 15-plus years of declining and low crime we had experienced would be over.

What we have generally seen is the opposite of that. We've seen a stable to, in some situations, declining crime rate. There certainly can be numerous examples to the counterpoint of that statement. That's a very broad statement. You can find sources out there that tend to cherry-pick and say, “Well, robbery in this community has gone up 15% in the last year”. It's not going to be a uniformly accurate statement, but in general, we've not seen the fallout and the consequences.

I would reiterate one of my opening comments. What we don't yet know are a couple of things. One, we don't yet know whether there has been a clear influence on citizen satisfaction, fear of crime, and perception of safety. Two, it may be too early to tell whether some of the initiatives and programs that have been cut, that might target youth, might possibly result—I don't think we know or have a preliminary indication—in a future generation of offenders who are not being pushed away from that poor choice. Once people start on that track, if we don't have the right interventions and early warning systems in place, it can very quickly get away from us. I don't think in the U.S. we can say that we are going to evade any problems with this particular economic downturn.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much, Dr. Schafer.

We'll now move to Mr. Scarpaleggia, please.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

That was very interesting, Dr. Schafer.

On your last point about the economy and crime, would it not be accurate to say that crime has more long-term causes many of which could be economic? For example, the persistence of youth unemployment over many business cycles results, sometimes, in a kind of criminal gang-related underclass or a drug subculture.

One has trouble intuitively understanding that if someone is laid off at the local GM plant, that suddenly they go and rob a bank or whatever. Would you say that the link is more long term and, as you say, maybe endemic, that if we don't deal with youth unemployment quickly, we end up creating this stubborn problem that may only go away with an aging population?

[Prof. Joseph Schafer]

Certainly I would preface this remark by saying I'm not an expert in this type of macro-level economic and criminological research. My view is that our past experience in the U.S. with crime during times of economic downturns leads us to believe that we would have seen a clearer manifestation of those problems by now than we have. There certainly is an argument that there might be a lagging effect. The relationship is not direct. It's not about dad who loses his job at the GM plant. It's about what happens when dad loses the job, is unable to find employment, falls into depression and alcoholism, and neglects his son, who ultimately grows up to make poor choices.

You are certainly correct in that we have to be very cautious in thinking that in the U.S. we've dodged the bullet, if you will, on this situation simply by virtue of not seeing that immediate outcome. It's a very complex set of relationships, many of which are long term and very difficult to disentangle or correct.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Thank you.

You mentioned the idea of using civilian volunteers. You made the point, perhaps a pre-emptive point, that you weren't just talking about the creation of neighbourhood watch groups, that you thought civilian volunteers could play a part in more complex, if you will, aspects of policing. Could you elaborate on that?

[Prof. Joseph Schafer]

Yes. In the U.S. we've tended to view volunteers as doing very low-level type tasks, what I generally say in addressing the issue with American police forces. Typically we see volunteers being brought together when there's a community festival and we need somebody to sit on a barricade to block traffic from going down a particular road. It's not a particularly high-skill task but an important task. We tend to view volunteers as supporting fairly low-level security and public order tasks, supporting very low-level clerical tasks.

I've heard of examples of agencies in the U.S. in the last couple of years training civilian volunteers to gather forensic evidence at crime scenes, again, using that as a way to dedicate fully trained staff for more serious incidents. You have burglary incidents where the forensics tend to be fairly simple: photographing a crime scene, dusting for prints perhaps, collecting some type of tool-mark impression, things of this nature. Having a civilian do these types of low priority, less serious types of events that tend to be quite high in volume and consume a lot of resources allows for fully trained personnel to focus on more complex violent crime incidents.

I'm not sure to what extent that situation has been legally vetted in terms of admissibility of evidence in U.S. courts. It goes back to cost and value for us and whether we are willing to offset for the savings in cost.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Yes, because evidence is the crux of a case, so you'd want to make sure that people who are accountable—

[Prof. Joseph Schafer]

Absolutely.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

—experts are gathering the evidence, I would imagine.

There's the whole issue of indicators, which seems to be quite a complex one. How do you measure the impact of policing? Is it just in terms of GDP lost? How do you measure the consequence of a 95-year-old grandmother who's been defrauded out of her life savings having to move into her daughter's basement, and so on? That must be one of the more challenging aspects of this exercise, developing indicators that are solid, that mean something, and that achieve a consensus of meaning, if you will, to measure impacts. I guess this is one of the major challenges.

[Prof. Joseph Schafer]

Absolutely. I would agree with you fully. It's getting a really accurate understanding of economics that goes beyond simple salary and benefit data into the impact of crime, and also measuring the less tangible influence that police and public safety officials have beyond simply the crime rate.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

You also mentioned that privatization reduces value. Could you explain what you mean by that?

[Prof. Joseph Schafer]

I would not necessarily say that in all situations and circumstances, but I think there can be times when privatization is a good idea and can save money.

We've also seen experience in the U.S. where, in the long run, it was determined that privatization actually was as expensive, or more expensive, than it would have been to simply keep something under government control. We're starting to see some examples and evidence of that in the U.S. with privatization of jails and prisons.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Thanks very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much.

I should also make mention, and maybe I did make mention of it already, that we will not be going to committee business.

We'll go back to Mr. Rafferty, please.

[John Rafferty, NDP, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. This is a fascinating discussion.

Thank you, Professor Schafer, for being here.

I have to comment on everybody's questioning. It really is of high quality. I'm learning a lot.

One of the things you talked about was asking questions dealing with what the future holds. When I look to the future of policing, I have a little trouble prognosticating. Maybe I watch too much science fiction. All I can think of is the movie I, Robot.

You mentioned some of the questions you would ask. If I were to ask you to look into the future, what are the sorts of things 10, 20, and 50 years down the road that you could perhaps personally anticipate might happen in policing, and what should we be looking at?

[Prof. Joseph Schafer]

One of the issues I alluded to in that set of questions related to public expectations about when, where, and how police services are delivered. Also, I think for most people over the age of perhaps 25 or 30, the notion that routinely we might interface not with a live police officer when we are a victim of crime, but by communicating by computer or telephone or some other type of telecommunications device with a computer system driven by artificial intelligence to report our victimization, is hard to fathom, hard to understand, and probably is very much an antithesis to our traditional idea about how citizens interface with government.

Today's youth is growing up more and more with less emphasis on face-to-face contact, and more reliance on technology as a modality of communication. In 10 years, when such technologies are more readily available for very low cost and at a very high technical quality, those folks, as they enter into adulthood, might think nothing of having their victimization reported not to a real, live person, but rather to a computer system that can understand what it is being told and ask follow-up questions, for instance, about the burglary that I've experienced. Therefore, we shouldn't necessarily presume constancy in the public expectation to have a uniformed, live patrol officer there to validate my experience as a crime victim.