Access to Information (ATI) as a Double-Edged Sword for Critical Policing Research

In perhaps no other area of scholarship is access to information (ATI) legislation as contentious and the stakes so high as in policing and security research. Although ATI has become an important mechanism by which researchers have been able to analyse security and police practices, there remain significant legislative barriers preventing access. A decade after 9/11, the need for increased scrutiny of government agencies tasked with security and policing remains high, as is evident from the proliferation of public and private policing, the advance of a general societal risk aversion, and the now ubiquitous nature of state security and surveillance. In this article we offer first-hand accounts that highlight the institutional imbalances between police organizations and researchers, and consider the potential long-term effects of ATI in this area of scholarship. ATI legislation in Canada is increasingly becoming both a tool for researchers to penetrate policing organizations and also a weapon with which security institutions can stymie critical inquiry.

The significant amount of Canadian ATI research that has stemmed from national security scholars shows the difficulties faced in this field when attempting to exercise the “right to know.” The strident lack of transparency within security and policing institutions tips the balance of access versus secrecy towards the latter, under the ever-present assumption that secrecy equals security.¹ However, this area of research plays an important role in political discourse by fostering public dialogue and raising awareness of questionable and illegal security practices. As Larsen points out, we have seen ATI used recently to shed light on politicized security issues such as the Arar Inquiry, the campaign to repatriate Abousfian Abdelrazik, and, most recently, the Afghan detainee transfer scandal.² Historic records have been used to form institutional ethnographies that have theorized and critiqued security practices such as the campaign against homosexuality in the civil service³ and spying on political high schoolers.⁴ Considering its penetrative and exposing possibilities, Huey suggests that ATI also be understood and used as a means of resisting the types of surveillance that have grown exponentially following 9/11.⁵ Although she notes the reluctance of criminologists to make use of these tools,⁶ Walby and Monaghan are more optimistic in the perseverance of researchers to sift through hundreds of pages of heavily redacted documents, as they did.⁷

The logic of security has extended risk aversion and surveillance measures beyond policing and security agencies, and accomplished a “re-ordering of politics and re-shaping of society in the name of security.”⁸ As we witness this logic subsume political and civic discourse, critical research on policing and security becomes an essential component to challenging the understandings and assumptions upon which it is based and operationalized. In what follows, we offer two first-hand accounts of police and security researchers attempting to navigate the terrain of information access.

ATI and Public Order Policing Research: Stephen R. Worth

In 2009 I began a research project on the policing of dissent in Canada. My analysis was to include an in-depth case study of the Ottawa Police Service (OPS), together with a more general look at public order approaches by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). The difficulty reported by fellow graduate students in gaining access to policing agencies for any sort of ethnography or even interviews, and the complicated and lengthy ethics approvals this entails, led me to believe that ATI requests would yield the best results in the most timely fashion. I submitted two requests at the federal and municipal levels, both pertaining to the strategies and tactics used to police protests and demonstrations.

My request to the RCMP, made formally through the Access to Information Act (ATIA), was processed in approximately seven weeks, with disappointing results. Expecting to at least receive a large quantity of heavily redacted documents that would allow me to piece together the types of considerations that influenced the planning of previous large demonstrations such as the 2003 G8 Summit in Kananaskis, or the 2007 Security and Prosperity Partnership in Montebello...