La violence contre les policiers a des répercussions importantes à la fois chez les policiers et pour les administrateurs de la police. En 2005, le taux canadien de voies de fait contre la police a atteint son plus haut sommet en plusieurs décennies, faisant état d’une situation préoccupante. Plusieurs provinces canadiennes connaissent d’ailleurs une hausse marquée de la violence contre leurs policiers depuis plusieurs années. Cette étude vise donc à examiner et à comprendre l’évolution du phénomène de violence contre les policiers au Canada par l’identification de facteurs qui pourraient expliquer les variations du taux de voies de fait contre les policiers. La méthode d’analyse privilégiée dans le cadre de cette étude est une analyse transversale de séries chronologiques regroupées (pooled time series) qui traite des données portant sur les dix provinces canadiennes pour une période allant de 1986 à 2006. Les résultats indiquent que plusieurs facteurs ont un impact sur la violence dont sont victimes les policiers : la proportion de la population âgée entre 15 et 24 ans, la proportion d’hommes de 15 ans et plus, la proportion de la population vivant dans une région urbaine, la proportion de gens divorcés, les taux résiduels de crimes de violence et de crimes rattachés aux drogues, et le nombre d’évasions et de personnes en liberté sans excuse. La présence croissante de policières, qui fait encore l’objet de débats, semble quant à elle réduire le nombre de voies de fait contre la police, quoique l’impact de ce facteur soit de faible portée. Au Québec, la une hausse importante du taux de voies de fait contre les policiers pourrait s’expliquer par la hausse de plusieurs facteurs identifiés comme jouant un rôle dans le phénomène, bien qu’il ne faille pas écarter qu’un changement dans la reportabilité puisse entrer en ligne de compte. / Violence against police officers has important implications both for police officers and police administration. In 2005, the Canadian rate of assault against police officers rose to its highest in decades, showing a worrying situation. Moreover, several Canadian provinces are experiencing a marked increase in violence against their police officers for several years. This study aims to examine and understand the trend of violence against the police officers in Canada by identifying factors affecting the rate of assaults against police officers. In order to do so, a pooled time series analysis, which processes data on the ten Canadian provinces for the period from 1986 to 2006, was performed. Findings indicate that several factors have an impact on the violence against the police: the proportion of young people aged 15-24, the proportion of males aged 15 and more, the proportion of population living in urban areas, the proportion of divorced people, the residual rates of violent crimes and drug crimes, and the number of people who escaped custody and prisoners unlawfully at large. The growing presence of women police officers, which is still debated, appears to reduce the number of assaults against police officers, although the impact of this factor is of limited scope. In Quebec, the continual increase in the rate of assaults against the police officers can possibly be explained by the increase of several factors identified as playing a role in the phenomenon, although a change in crime reporting can also be taken into account.

This thesis examines the regulation of women in public space in Liverpool between 1908 and 1957. It considers the complex relationship between the laws used to police solicitation, governmental debate about female prostitution and local purity campaigners’ concerns with the moral vulnerability of young, working-class, urban women. It is argued that the ways in which prostitution was understood and managed had an impact upon all women’s access to and use of public space, together with wider definitions of female morality and immorality. The thesis adds to historical understandings about the implications of prostitution regulation in the twentieth century, by moving away from London-focused histories to offer a detailed analysis of the ways in which national debates about vice were taken up at local level and with what consequences. I begin by exploring the problems with policing prostitution in the early-twentieth century and argue that increasing concern about the difficulty in differentiating prostitutes from ‘ordinary’ women provoked anxiety amongst law makers and government officials alike. It is argued that the debates canvassed by the 1927 Macmillan Committee indicate the degree to which moral codes about female sexuality informed official approaches to prostitution. The thesis considers the implications of these broad debates in Liverpool. Focusing on the work of the Liverpool Vigilance Association (LVA), it is proposed that fears about the moral threat of prostitution fuelled the organisation’s belief in the necessity of preventative patrol work centred on the moral surveillance of young, working-class women. This thesis shows that in interwar Liverpool, women’s movements were circumscribed first and foremost by their gender. Traditional, nineteenth-century ideas about women’s place within the domestic sphere created a sense among local purity campaigners that female morality was being threatened by women’s visibility in urban spaces. Other aspects of social status, such as class, race and employment experiences, heightened the interest of the LVA in targeting distinctive groups of women. The thesis demonstrates that in their efforts to regulate women’s movements through the city of Liverpool, local purists singled-out working-class and immigrant (especially Irish) women, as they believed them to be the most susceptible to corruption. This thesis draws on a wide range of archival sources, especially Home Office Records relating to the Public Places (Order) Bill and the establishment of the 1927 Macmillan Committee, as well as the LVA archive, in order to show how national and local policies on prostitution were both interdependent and distinct.