Aboriginal Policing in Rural Canada: Establishing a Research Agenda

Canada’s First Nations Policing Program (FNPP) provides the funding and programmatic structure for policing 535 rural Aboriginal communities. After two decades and almost three billion (CA) dollars in expenditures, however, there has been comparatively little scholarly assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of this approach to policing. This study highlights the current state of the FNPP and we find that most government funded research has focused upon the administrative goals of the FNPP while relatively little government or scholarly attention has been paid to program outcomes. We identified three broad needs for Aboriginal policing research in Canada, including; (a) developing a research based inventory of best practices in rural and Aboriginal policing; (b) examining the efficacy of plural policing; and (c) how the study of Aboriginal policing can inform organizational theory. Each of these issues has implications for the development of research, practice, policy, and theory, and ultimately, ensuring just and fair outcomes concerning public safety for Canada’s Aboriginal peoples

Elderly Jail Inmates: Problems, Prevalence and Public Health

Increases in the size of the elderly population in jails and prisons have created considerable challenges for health-care practitioners within correctional systems and public health agencies. This study examined the prevalence of elderly inmates in 134 county jails and some of the challenges that these older inmates confront. Our findings indicate that the prevalence of elderly inmates in county jails is higher than reported in recent national studies. Further, these populations were thought to be at high-risk for selfharm, suicide, and victimization by other inmates. Implications for health care within county jails as well as public health approaches to solving challenges associated with elderly jail inmates are addressed

A perfect storm: Violence toward women in the Bakken oil patch

Communities in the Bakken region of Montana and North Dakota that experienced a resource-based boom starting in the mid-2000s had significant increases in the volume and seriousness of violence toward women. We identify five community factors distinctive to these boomtowns that created a perfect storm where these crimes proliferated including: (a) precarious housing arrangements; (b) the social isolation of women; (c) lack of domestic violence shelters and other social supports for survivors; (d) a workplace culture in the oilfields supportive of substance abuse and hyper-masculinity, and; (e) the inability of boomtown justice systems to respond to these crimes in an effective or timely manner. Although this critical analysis describes the outcomes in a U.S. jurisdiction, the conditions in rapid growth communities are similar throughout the globe and we suggest these community factors be considered in the responses to domestic and intimate partner violence in these rural areas. Our goal in identifying these factors is to work toward the development of an intervention model for officials anticipating resource-based booms to mitigate this violence

Risky Lifestyles and Unintentional Firearms Fatalities

This state-level study departs from other investigations of unintentional firearms fatalities by examining the relationships between lifestyle choices, legislation, and accidental gun deaths. We find that the source of these deaths is very similar to those for unintentional fatalities from other mechanisms, such as motor vehicle accidents, residential fires, or occupational injuries. Unintentional mortality is consistently associated with state-level indicators of risky behavior, and to a lesser extent, inactivity. Moreover, we also examined the influences of child access prevention (safe storage), overall firearms laws, and background checks on firearms fatalities. Unlike previous research, we found that these legislative initiatives were not significantly associated with reductions in accidental shooting deaths. Our findings suggest that theories about unintentional fatalities will remain incomplete and harm reduction policies, including the public health model endorsed by many scholars, will not be fully effective if the role of risktaking and sensation-seeking behaviors as an important source of these tragedies is neglected

Developing employability for policing: An international undergraduate comparison

How employability is developed in students is of immense importance to the individual and to potential employers. Sharing practice in relation to the development of employability for policing helps shape curriculums to prepare students for their future careers and inform policy makers. Four universities teaching policing undergraduate programmes provided qualitative details of how employability is embedded within their studies. These were compared and contrasted to provide an international comparison. The findings suggest similarities in the ways in which the generic employability skills and broader professional skills, such as ethics and reflective practice, are taught. However, differences in how technical/vocational skills are developed. </jats:p

Do Rural School Resource Officers Contribute to Net-Widening? Evidence from a Southern State

There has been considerable recent scholarly commentary about the existence of a school-to-prison pipeline. In this research, several authors have questioned whether the presence of school resource officers (SROs) has increased the proportion of students being referred to juvenile justice systems for status or minor offenses. Research to date, however, has not established a clear relationship between the presence of SROs and these referrals. In this study, we examine the relationship between referrals made in urban and rural schools to determine whether rural students are disadvantaged by net widening when compared with their urban counterparts. To carry out this study of justice by geography, the referrals of 57,005 urban and rural students into the juvenile justice system of a southeastern state over a three-year period were analyzed. The findings presented here suggest that there are important rural/urban differences in the impact of the Department of Human Services and schools in the expansion of the school-to-prison pipeline. Implications for policy and future research are also discussed

Managing prison gangs: Results from a survey of U.S. prison systems

Responses from a survey of gang management strategies were collected from U.S. prison systems holding 1.19 million inmates. The results provided insight into the prevalence of gang members in prisons, gang structure, as well as the strategies used to manage the threat that these groups pose. Officials from most prison systems reported an increase in the proportion of security threat group (STG) members over the past five years and that these offenders were more disruptive and sophisticated than five years ago. Despite these challenges, there was no one clear strategy for the investigation or suppression of these groups, nor did most systems evaluate the effectiveness of their current gang management interventions. A lack of rehabilitative opportunities for gang members represents one shortcoming in the range of gang management strategies in most jurisdictions. The implications of these findings are addressed.