Publications

“If by a "Liberal" they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people-their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights and their civil liberties-someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a "Liberal", then I'm proud to say I'm a "Liberal.”

 

John F. Kennedy

Mending Broken Fences Policing

Police services across the globe are increasingly perceived as heavy handed, racist, and unnecessarily violent. As a result, large, sometimes even national demonstrations have been waged against police policy and strategy. Mending Broken Fences Policing provides a discussion on contemporary policing, the role of policing in modern society, and its relationship to the diverse communities represented in a postmodern world. Mending Broken Fences Policing provides a model, based on social cohesion and police intervention, intelligence led and community policing (Ipcp); which, supplemented by a quality/quantity/crime (Qqc) framework provide a four step process for viewing policing services from a vantage point beyond Broken Windows and StatCom.

Emergency! Quarantine, Evacuation, and Back Again

"Emergency! Quarantine, Evacuation, and Back Again". Co-authored (collaborative effort with and other contributors), exploring pandemic-era crisis management, covering issues like health info, lockdowns, policing, and policy, and  general emergency preparedness challenges.

Canadian Criminal Justice Association

CCJA interview offering insight, on  a variety of topics related to sentencing reports for vulnerable and the need for policy development supporting an integrative approach to services related to trauma, the paradox of poverty and public safety.

Canada’s Corrections System –
The New “Scoop”

As in Canada, First Nations Peoples around the world – Aboriginal Peoples in Australia, Māori in New Zealand, tribes along the Amazon, in Russia and Japan – are fighting their historical cancellation. It is incomprehensible for most of us what cancel culture has meant to peoples so effectively dismissed over the ages through outlawing of their social and spiritual practices, abduction of their children for forcible indoctrination by foreign and abusive authorities, criminalization of their language, subjection to religious conversion, relocation, and even murder.

Peacemaker

The Rotary Peace Centre at Chulalongkon University Bangkok, Thailands

Policing: Peace through legitimate community collaboration

The fundamental criterion in the assessment of the development of emerging democracies is the establishment of social capital
By social capital I mean the establishment of institutions and values that align with the political culture and economy towards the support of greater citizen participation in public policy, accountable governance and moralistic trust among the citizenry.

Policing has a complex role to play in the development and sustaining of civil society. Police are required to maintain the law
and order in order to create the conditions in which civil processes can be initiated, and the same time policing may in itself be one of the obstacles for the expression of civil processes. Policing has itself, therefore, to undergo significant evolution in
achieving the balance necessary for the processes of taking its place as one of the two central pillars of democratization of societies.

One of the areas in which there has been a radical change within policing is the emergence and development of community po-
licing — the recognition that police cannot control crime and disorder on their own. That crime is best identified and controlled through collaborative problem solving with communities, and by mobilizing and empowering communities themselves to produce appealing communities in which the citizen's themselves are enfranchised to take leadership in seeking and implementing
solutions to issues of local crime and disorder. In order to be able to achieve this police organizations must be prepared to transform traditional approaches, characterized by reactive policing, to approaches that emphasize proactive, preventative crime man-
agement.

The processes and institutions that contribute to the enhancement of social cohesion are those that create social networks, promote norms, and provide support and opportunities for civil integration, The work of organizations such as business associations, religious organizations, libraries, sports clubs, schools, and community organizations and community events provide the critical opportunities for citizens to interact in ways that contribute to the development of cooperation, tolerance, understanding and ownership of their communities. 

Leaders in policing must develop processes for identifying such indicators through an iterative process, for specifically targeted
areas within which police services are being modeled. They can be for specific neighborhoods, larger communities, or even an
entire city or nation, depending on the scope and scale of the police services. Community policing requires ownership by communities, including police, citizens, local governments, nonprofit organizations, and special interest groups. Any legitimate model for the provision of policing and the mobilization of communities therefore, must include social cohesion as integral component for the maintenance of civil society. Indicators that monitor the health of communities -their capacity to form trusting
partnerships within the community and with the types of groups and resources noted above.

The development of community policing strategies, better characterized as collaborative policing, from traditional 'problem oriented' policing is similar, in principle, to the evolution of restorative justice from retributive justice - A change from public order policing, zero tolerance, and expert based authority, to a more collaborative philosophy of policing which emphasizes persuasion, social justice, incorporating community and community interaction'. Community policing therefore represents a form of
collaboration, which like alternative dispute resolution (ADR) processes, aims to transform the manner in which societies view the nature and scope of conflict.

Despite resistance, there is a growing sense that it is time to look beyond authoritative policing as the only model for police community relationships, and to consider a variety of collaborative partnerships in addressing issues of social conflict and crime.
Community policing promise to change the role of law enforcement and the relationships between police and citizens, and can be expected to alter elements of both the operational and organizational environments of policing.
Although a universal definition of community policing remains elusive, community-policing programs have a number of common characteristics that can be summarized using the rationales outlined by experts in restorative justice and alternative dispute resolution?:

First, that diversity and the complexity of societal life encourages the strengthening of non-state social entities.