| Police behaviour is influenced by a complex system of situational, organizational, and community-related factors. However, the applicability and generalizability of previous research on police discretion are questionable within the Canadian context. Despite a growing concern in Canada about the extent and seriousness of youth crime, there is currently a shortfall in information on all aspects of police decision-making.; Consequently, the overall objective of this dissertation was to provide a comprehensive account of how the police deal with youth crime in Canada. A conceptual framework informed by theory and previous research was adopted in order to address the extent to which organizational, environmental, and situational factors affect police discretion. Additionally, this dissertation work acknowledges that the policing environment varies substantially across Canada and also explores whether these factors vary by type of community.; A mixed methods approach was adopted that not only uses quantitative and qualitative data but also analyzes the qualitative data statistically and through a grounded theory approach. The qualitative data are based on over 200 semi-structured interviews conducted in 2002 with officers in 95 police services across Canada---from all provinces and territories, all types of communities, and all types of police services. The quantitative analyses are based on data from the quantification of interviews and also the aggregate and incident-based UCR Surveys.; The findings suggest that police behaviour in applying the law is case dependent and operates on a continuum from least to most intrusive in terms of the type of social control and the style of law adopted. The results also confirm some of what previous researchers found thirty or forty years ago that the degree of bureaucracy and type of police service, the effect of police policy, police strength, police culture, the degree of youth specialization, decision-making processes, situational factors, officer characteristics, type of community, and police perceptions of the neighbourhood and community all have an impact on police discretion to some extent, although not always in the direction and intensity expected. Analyses that extend the work of Weber (1946), Lipsky (1980), Simon (1976), and Black (1976) suggest viable alternatives to understand police behaviour. Finally, the implications of the results are that not only is it presumptuous to assume that research conducted outside Canada is applicable, but also that patterns in police behaviour are in some cases unique to metropolitan, suburban, rural, and northern communities. |
