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  • Whitewashing Criminal Justice in Canada: Preventing Research through Data Suppression
  • Paul Millar and Akwasi Owusu-Bempah

Introduction

Race and racism have long played an important role in Canadian law1 and continue to do so. However, conducting research on race and criminal justice in Canada is difficult given the lack of readily available data that include information about race.2 We show that data on the race of victims and accused persons are being suppressed by police organizations in Canada and argue that suppression of race prevents quantitative anti-racism research while not preventing the use of these data by the police for racial profiling. We also argue that when powerful institutions, such as the police, have knowledge that they keep secret or refuse to discover, it serves the interests of those institutions at the expense of the public. Fears that reporting of racial data will result in racial profiling or the stigmatization of racialized communities are not assuaged by the repression of this information. Stigmatization may still occur, and racial profiling can continue to happen, but without public knowledge. Quantitative anti-racist research requires consistent, institutionalized reporting of race data through all aspects of Canadian justice. We outline what data are available, what data are needed, and where consistency is lacking. It is argued that institutional preferences for whitewashed data, with race and ethnicity removed, should be subrogated to transparency. [End Page 653]

Background

Although historical research illustrates the prominent place that race has played in Canada throughout its history, more recent studies have begun to illustrate the role of race in modern policing. In particular, recent studies show that Blacks are over-represented in local police stops in Canada3 as they are in the United States4 and the United Kingdom.5 Aboriginals are over-represented in Canadian prisons, in some jurisdictions astonishingly so,6 as well as in other justice statistics.7 Race also plays a role in Canadian bail/remand decisions and decisions of accused to plead guilty.8 The issue of over-representation is so well established that sentencing provisions direct judges to pay particular attention to the circumstances of Aboriginal offenders.9

There are two main explanations for why racial minorities are over-represented in criminal justice statistics. First, these minorities are often located in positions of social disadvantage, putting them at greater risk of involvement in crime as both victims and perpetrators. Second, this over-representation can be explained, at least in part, by differential treatment by the police and other aspects of criminal justice, that is, systemic discrimination by race. One recent study has attempted to test these two theories by controlling for both neighbourhood characteristics and race, finding that the social characteristics of neighbourhoods were not able to completely explain the effect of race.10 There are documented individual cases of racial profiling where police have targeted individuals for increased supervision because of their race.11 [End Page 654] Moreover, surveys indicate that people perceive injustice, that is, unequal treatment by race, by the police and the justice system.12

The existence of racial minority over-representation in the justice system, public perception of racial profiling, and individual cases of racial profiling demonstrate the need for further research into the systematic treatment of race by criminal justice in Canada. However, the task cannot be accomplished without adequate data.13 In order to identify and ultimately reduce racism, we must embed tools for collecting appropriate and consistent data by race into our institutions. In 2002, the Auditor General of Canada lamented the lack of adequate data in the justice system, particularly on Aboriginals, women, and children.14 Although some progress has been made, data on race, as we intend to show, have been declining in recent years. 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.15

Data Indicating the Race of Victims and Accused Persons in Canada

Statistics on victimization in Canada have two main sources, official crime statistics and victim surveys. The latter include several cycles of Statistics Canada’s General Social Survey (GSS) devoted to general victimization, the Canadian data in the...

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