Book Review: Policing Reform: A Study of the Reform Process and Police Institution in Toronto
| DOI | 10.1177/000486588501800307 |
| Published date | 01 September 1985 |
| Date | 01 September 1985 |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
BOOK
REVIEW
191
which children of members go, and if possible the type and
number
of parties given
by each delegation.
There
is nothing
that
needs to be written about the substance of
the
book. In the
light of some of the best researches in cross-national analysis in
the
mid 1970s,
especially Newman's Comparative Deviance;
Gurr
et al's The Politics 0/Crime and
Conflict. and Clinard's Cities with
Low
Crime, the present work from an American
Professor of Criminal Justice is most disappointing.
Canberra SATYANSHU K
MUKHERJEE
Policing Reform: AStudy of the Reform Process
and
Police Institution in Toronto,
Maeve
W
McMahon
and
Richard
V
Ericson,
Toronto:
Centre
of
Criminology, University of
Toronto
(1984) 170 pp.
The
process of
reform
of social institutions is an extremely complex
one.
Although
there
is growing
literature
on
the
reform
process in
the
fields of
administration, government, and public policy, there are few works directed at
reform of one of the most complex and socially important institutions of all - the
Police.
For
this reason astudy such as
that
carried out by McMahon
and
Ericson
is looked forward to with some interest.
The
expectation of interesting material is not disappointed.
The
authors present
observational material on the evolution
and
operation of a citizen group, the
Citizens'
Independent
Review of Police Activities
(CIRPA),
set up to peruse
general reform of
the
Metropolitan
Toronto
Police Force. Aparticular focus of the
group's efforts was
the
reform of the procedures for processing complaints against
the police.
In the
summer
of 1981
CIRP
A was established as one response to recurring
allegations of police wrongdoing which had surfaced during
the
1970s.
CIRPA
was
an example of
"outsider"
reform utilizing fairly confrontationalist tactics.
"Insider"
reform
was
represented
by
the
formation of a new
state
system
(the
Public
Complaints Commissioner's office) to deal specifically with complaints
and
so make
the police more accountable to the public. This latter body was viewed with great
suspicion and some cynicism by members of
CIRPA,
who saw it as an official
attempt
to channel
and
water down complaints against police.
Using a combination of methods, including documentary analysis, observation
and
interviewing, the researchers sought to determine the
nature
of the reform
process by studying
"as
many aspects of the
CIRPA's
evolution as possible in a
relatively short period of time (luly, 1982 - February 1983) whilst taking care to
differentiate the organization's rhetoric from its practices, and its intentions from
its effects" (p 10).
The
result is a fascinating picture of the changes that take place in the strategies
of opposed organizations (in this case, the Police Commission,
CIRPA,
and the
Public
Complaints
Commissioner's office) struggling to
promote,
resist,
and
accommodate reform of a public agency.
The
dilemma of whether
areformist
group
should maintain aconfrontationalist stance or whether it must allow itself to be
co-opted
to
some
extent
in
order
to
make
some gains is a
question
that
is
particularly addressed.
The
authors are even-handed in their
treatment
of all
participants, criticizing
the
Police Commission for some of
their
tactics
and
regrqtting that reform groups have spent so little effort in developing criteria for
assessing their own efforts and outcomes. Reformers seldom realize
that
their own
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