There has been a history of a strained relationship between the public and the police institution for decades; most recently as a result of documented high levels of arrest rates among marginalized communities. Stop and frisk practices have been active in the United States since the 1950s and have been studied academically in the United States since the 1990s. However, research concerning Canadian data is limited.
This project, using Bourdieusian concepts (field, habitus, capital, and doxa) with other resistance to change/police culture research, addresses the gaps in literature surrounding the practice of ‘carding’ in Canada by determining the forms of strategies and capital used by parties to defend and contest the police practice in the city of Toronto.
Using a form of Document Analysis, this project created inductive categories from reports and recommendations submitted by the Toronto Police, several activist groups, and the province of Ontario between the years of 2012-2015.
Findings from this paper were similar to previous literature; however, we saw an emotional argument surrounding the use of risk emerge through those justifying the police practice of ‘carding’. This emotional argument relied on a platform of fear and risk discourse, arguing that having limited faith in police not only goes against previously accepted practices, but places our communities in greater potential danger.
Furthermore, our findings showed that narratives presented by those contesting the practice of ‘carding’ saw legal and factual arguments emerge which were not seen in previous literature. These legal and factual arguments focused on Constitutionality and statistics to contest the practice of ‘carding’, rather than rely on emotional arguments as seen in previous literature.
This project allowed for a snapshot of the case in Toronto to help understand the issue in a Canadian context. Many themes developed were similar to previous literature; however, we saw a new emotional argument surrounding a risk discourse and those contesting ’carding’ have accessed the legal ‘field’ to express concerns. Directions for future research are presented at the end of this study.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uottawa.ca/oai:ruor.uottawa.ca:10393/39738 |
| Date | 18 October 2019 |
| Creators | Levins, Kyle |
| Contributors | Kempa, Michael |
| Publisher | Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa |
| Source Sets | Université d’Ottawa |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | application/pdf |
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