The Historical Treatment of Urban Policing in Canada: A Review of the Literature

Abstract

The author reviews the research produced on the history of municipal policing in Canada, partly through the creation and analysis of a database. There are three types of work: comprehensive treatments, historical case-studies of particular police forces, and studies examining subprocesses in particular forces. The author then discusses this literature's advantages and disadvantages. Finally, the author makes a series of recommendations for improving the existing knowledge base.

With the exception of the North-West Mounted Police (NWMP), and its successors the Royal North-West Mounted Police (RNWMP) and Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), relatively little published material exists on the history of Canadian public police and policing in general. Nevertheless, the amount of research produced on the history of municipal policing in Canada is growing. At the beginning of the 1990s one could only point to a handful of studies. Today there are at least 41 separate efforts (i.e., doctoral dissertations, master's theses, reports, articles, chapters, or books). They provide a knowledge base that can and should be built upon. In order to improve the quality and scope of future research, I created and analysed a database on this material. Here I divide the work into three categories, then discuss the advantages and disadvantages of this literature, including the sources used. In sum, I review what has been written in order to point out appropriate directions for future research.

Keywords: Canada, urban policing, polices forces, database analysis, history of Canadian public police, municipal policing, knowledge base

JEL Classification: K14, K39, K49, O51, L89