Should crime data being collected based on race? Many may say yes, and many may say no, but according to two Ontario criminologists, they believe it is the best method, the Toronto Sun reported.
In a report titled Whitewashing Criminal Justice in Canada: Preventing Research through Data Suppression, Paul Millar, a criminal justice professor at Nipissing University and Akwasi Owusu-Bempah, a doctoral candidate at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Criminology argue that crime data over represents Aboriginals in Canadian prisons, and it over represents blacks in Canadian local police stops.
“Information on race is essential for the equitable provision of policing services and for the development of police policy,” Owusu-Bempah said on the U of T website.
The authors suggest that the over-representation is due to the social disadvantages of many Aboriginals and black people, where many of the times they are residing in areas where there are high risks of crime involvement, whether as a victim or perpetrator.
The differential treatment of minorities by police officers and other sectors of criminal justice is an important factor, Owusu-Bempah and Millar says.
“If we are serious about reducing racism and making our law responsive to behaviour instead of personal characteristics, we must systematically collect data on race,” say Millar. “Suppressing race statistics makes quantitative anti-racism research impossible. Further, failure to collect data does not prevent racial profiling.”
However, RCMP spokesman Sergeant Greg Cox disagrees with the two authors as he believes that when an officer is asking a victim or perpetrator what their race is, it “may give rise to human rights and privacy concerns,” the National Post reported.
Cox also said that officers could be in a position of breaking the force’s policy of “bias-free policing.”
The study is published in the current issue of Canadian Journal of Law and Society.
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