The Police and Armed Robbery in Canada
| Published date | 01 October 1981 |
| Author | Raymond Bellemare,André Normandeau |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X8105400410 |
| Date | 01 October 1981 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
ANDRE NORMANDEAU, Ph.D.
Criminologist
and
Professor at The
School
of
Criminology. University of'Montreal,
and
RAYMOND BELLEMARE
Police inspector. Quebec Provincial Police.
THE POLICE
AND
ARMED
ROBBERY IN
CANADA
The Authors
Andre Normandeau has a Ph.D. degree in sociology from the
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (1968). His dissertation
was on the subject of
"Patterns
of Robbery in Philadelphia". He has
been a professor at the School of Criminology, University of
Montreal, since 1968and
Chairman
of the School from 1970to 1979.
His main interests in the last few years have been public attitudes
and
crime, criminal statistics, prevention and crime policy.
Raymond Bellemare has been a police inspector with the Quebec
Provincial Police
(QPP)
since 1960. He was in charge of the robbery
squad for ten years and is now in charge of all the police activities of
the
QPP
for the District of Montreal.
The Situation
For
the past twenty years at least, Quebec, and particularly the urban
community
of Montreal, has held the
Canadian
championship for
armed robbery. On comparing
our
data
with those of the United
States, Montreal is always very near the
top
of the list, far behind
New York,
but
close to cities such as Los Angeles,
San
Francisco,
Detroit
and
Washington (see Table I).
There are not even
any
fluctuations to speak of. There is such a
wide margin between the figures emanating from Quebec
and
those
from the other
Canadian
provinces
that
without having to go to the
trouble of specifying the year or even verifying the methods of
calculation, Quebec's superiority is perfectly obvious. If, for
example, we establish the rate of armed robberies according to
population, we see at a glance
that
the Quebec rate per 100,000
inhabitants is far greater
than
similar rates in the other provinces. If,
on the other
hand,
we go by absolute figures, we see
that
Quebec,
even though it is only the second most populous province,
out-
numbers all the
other
provinces,
Ontario
included (see Table II).
390 October
/98/
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