Rural Policing,Youth and Overlapping Fields of Youth Justice

Abstract

In the current article, we document the changing roles and responsibilities related to the implementation of the Canadian Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA). Police officers’ experiences and responses to the implementation of the YCJA reveal a disparity between the officers’ idealised role and their actual tasks involving youth. Drawing on Bourdieu’s theory of the habitus and field, we consider the field of youth justice and its effects on rural policing strategies in Canada. We consider the shifting standard for police behaviours from data gathered through interviews and focus groups with police officers. We find standards in the field of policing shift to reflect new realities enacted with the YCJA.

Keywords

Bourdieu Canada field habitus officer roles rural policing Youth Criminal Justice Act

Introduction

In Canada, the Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA) was implemented in 2003 and led to changes in the roles police adopt dealing with young people. Whereas some officers adopt proactive, community policing–based approaches, others resent the YCJA as an imposition on their ability to police (Ricciardelli, 2018). Changes are felt particularly in rural areas where officers already must negotiate their roles within communities (see Huey and Ricciardelli, 2015). In the current article, we reflect on officer experiences engaging with youth in a rural Atlantic province to illuminate how changes made in the field of youth justice result in changes to the field and habitus of policing. We base the article on research that documents the implementation of the YCJA in the province (albeit almost a decade after it came into effect in Canada), specifically the experience of police as they navigate the youth-specific legislation. We analyse how these changes affect the practice of rural policing. Specifically, how changes in youth justice reshape the habitus of policing by informing notions of competent versus incompetent police behaviour, which lead officers to renegotiate their practices to remain competitive in the field. Policing scholars recognise the divide between rural and urban policing, insofar as rural policing expects officers to fulfil different roles than urban policing (i.e. social worker) (Crank, 1990; Liederbach and Frank, 2003; Pelfrey, 2007) and rural officers are subject to different stresses than an urban officer (Sandy and Devine, 1978). Researchers have examined rural policing in the United States (Liederbach and Frank, 2003; Mawby and Yarwood, 2016; Sims, 1988; Thurman and McGarrell, 2015) and United Kingdom (Garriott, 2013; Jones, 1996; Yarwood, 2005), but not to the same degree in Canada (Donnermeyer et al., 2016; Jones et al., 2018; Ricciardelli, 2018).

Our work adds to the growing research on rural policing by considering the experience of such policing in the Canadian context and how the law is applied differently across different legal terrains by examining rural officers’ legal consciousness regarding youth criminal justice. Youth justice is often discussed as a homogeneous and evenly applied system of law (Alain et al., 2016; Bala and Anand, 2013; Bazemore and Griffiths, 2003; Chatterjee and Elliott, 2003). Drawing on the practice theory of Pierre Bourdieu, we contravene this orientation and demonstrate how youth justice is applied differently across officers with various levels of experience in police roles across rural contexts.

Bourdieu and the Policing Habitus

Researchers in policing have employed Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of field, habitus and capital to discuss participation in crime and the police officer role. Within the latter, the concept of police culture developed as ‘a system of shared values and understandings passed from one generation of police to the next’ (Chan, 2004: 328). Culture is a means to make visible the relationship of the police officer and the law and to place the officer’s practices in context. We utilise police culture to frame how rural officers interpret the YCJA and their role in enacting youth justice. To analyse police culture, we employ Bourdieu’s concept of field, habitus and cultural capital, with particular attention paid to Janet Chan’s (1997, 2004, 2008) concept of the policing habitus and field (see also, Spencer and Patterson, 2016).

Practice forms a central feature of Bourdieu’s cultural analysis. Practices compose social interactions of any lifestyle and represent and define the social world from which the agent originated (Bourdieu, 2000a: 170). ‘Classifiable practices and works’ of agents follow from the habitus being both a ‘system of schemes generating classifiable practices and works’ and a ‘system of schemes of perception and appreciation’ (Bourdieu, 2000a: 171). Central to understanding the systems of schemes of perception and appreciation is the habitus. Habitus is a mediating concept that assists in revoking the common sense duality between the individual and the social by capturing ‘the internalization of externality and the externalization of internality’; that is, how culture becomes inscribed in agents and guide them in their creative responses to the constraints and solicitations of their extant milieu (Bourdieu, 1977; see also, Spencer, 2009). Habitus stands as a ‘structured and structuring structure’, a means of both organising the conditions of existing and of being organised by the conditions of existing (Bourdieu, 2000a). Habitus structures the ‘practices and perceptions of practices’, but is structured by the internalisation of who belongs in what space (Bourdieu, 2000a: 170). ‘“Interpersonal” relations are never . . . individual-to-individual (sic) relationships’, as the structure of each class habitus is always present in every interaction (Bourdieu, 2010: 81). The use of habitus in discussions of culture illustrates how ‘society becomes inscribed in persons’ by endowing them with ‘enduring dispositions’, distinct capacities and manners and by guiding their responses and practices within their social world (Spencer and Patterson, 2016). Inasmuch as the habitus inscribes practices and manner, not belonging to a different habitus defines and differentiates the disposition of an agent of any habitus. ‘Fundamental oppositions’ stand as structuring principles between one habitus and another (Bourdieu, 2000a: 172).

Policing culture inscribes a policing habitus on agents through several avenues. Both Chan (1997) and Reiner (1985) pose that officers are aware of the boundaries of what constitutes ‘real police work’ and what does not, despite ‘very little of these officers’ time on the streets [being] spent on what they consider to be their “primary function”’ (Chan, 1997: 76–77; see also Reiner 1985). Officers are traditionally described as perceiving their role to be engaging in ‘a “war against crime,” maintaining order, and protecting people’s lives and property’, a separate role from tasks officers routinely perform (Chan, 1997: 76). Manning (2003) suggests that the environment impacts the policing habitus by designating the function, or the ‘central claim’, of policing (p. 53). Managing social order and defining how order is managed varies based on time, place, race/ethnicity, class and audience (Manning, 2003: 53), which leads to different understandings of the role of police and, thus, different but intersecting policing habitus. For instance, the goal of policing in a rural Canadian area is to manage social order, but the social realities of the space will lead to different definitions of management in comparison to those derived in an urban city in the United States. The definitions shape how officers understand their environment and, in so doing, shape a unique habitus of policing for the rural officers. Regardless of the region, an awareness of what is and is not police work serves as one boundary of the policing habitus within each policing habitus.

Based on the habitus’ definition of how to maintain order, policing roles manifest in different policing styles, including those of reactive, proactive and community policing. Reactive policing is incident driven or ‘citizen initiated’ (Jorgensen, 1981: 257), a model of policing aimed at addressing offences that have happened, rather than preventing crime. Proactive policing, alternatively, relies on officers to prevent crime by treating policing as an ‘intelligence-driven’ form of ‘risk management’ (Ratcliffe, 2003: 2). Strategies of proactive policing include using crime data to determine where policing efforts should be targeted, which may lead to increased contact between police and members of specific (seemingly targeted) groups (Jones, 2014). Community policing places officers into neighbourhoods as informal social control that rely on community participation to, for example, supply local intelligence (Fielding, 1995; Greene and Mastrofski, 1988). In the present context, simply by virtue of the space, rural police engage in community policing, as the officers are, or become in time, deeply embedded members of the community (Decker, 1979). Yet, the practices and manners officers enact in a policing habitus are unique to policing, or a specific style of policing, as these practices include officers employing ‘routine ways of categorising their environment’ (Chan, 1997: 77).

In policing, the process of socialisation is ‘the process through which a novice learns the skills, knowledge and values necessary to become a competent member of an organisation or occupation’ (Chan, 2004: 328). Through training, a given agent is educated and given knowledge; they are inscribed with the rules and resources to navigate their space in the social order. Said process involves both active and passive accumulations of knowledge about laws, techniques of law enforcement and maintenance of order, organisational skills and manners that are compatible with other organisation members (Chan, 2004). Understanding training as part of systems of reproduction illuminates how training and education reproduce habitus for a social structure; a newly socialised agent is socialised by another previously socialised agent. Through the continued adoption of police culture by new officers undergoing training, the habitus’ system of cultural capital is reproduced and the image of the ‘competent officer’ reinforced to reflect older models of ‘competent’. Officers share behaviours, knowledge and social habits with other officers, creating a shared understanding of the correct conduct within their specific field. By embodying the correct behaviour, knowledge and social habits, officers create social capital and are considered competent within their field. Hoffman refers to this as a form of ‘output’ competency, the process of being or being considered successful within an organisation as a result of receiving and employing the correct training (Hoffmann, 1999: 276).

Field describes the space where a given game takes place. Fields condition the habitus, and simultaneously, the habitus constitutes and makes sense of the field through cultural frames (Chan, 2004: 338). Fields constitute a ‘network of relations among objective positions within it’, a social space characterised by conflict and competition within the space (Moyle and Coomber, 2017: 314; see also Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992; Chan, 2004). Hierarchies of capital structure a field – rewards and prestige offer a higher status within the field, while sanctions lower the respective position (Chan, 2004: 330). The agent is trained and socialised to inhabit a specific field and exist in a relative social position. Policing is a field with its own rules and social expectations inhabited by officers. Youth justice also constitutes a field, inhabited by lawmakers, politicians, academics, employees and activists. These two fields exist as adjacent and intersect when an officer needs to interact with a young person and youth criminal law.

Intersecting fields change the dynamics of relationships in a field and thus, the habitus (see Chan, 2004: 340). As an intersecting field, policing shapes youth justice. Likewise, policing is shaped and changed by interactions with the field of youth justice. Changes within an adjacent field change the objective conditions of the interacting fields. Changes, such as those to legal frameworks, like the YCJA, which structure the field of youth justice, also affects the objective conditions of the field of policing. Shifts reflect a change to the objective conditions and require adjustments of the habitus; ‘changes in the field create a new “necessity” which may require the creation of new strategies for coping’ (Chan, 2004: 340). Changes can be the source of anxiety, as the members socialised within the former field are unfamiliar and uncomfortable in new objective conditions. ‘The organisational habitus they acquired’ no longer serves within the new field (Chan, 2004: 340; see also Bourdieu, 2000b: 161). The shift serves to reorient the field of competition, as the axiomatic knowledge of individuals becomes more diverse and the expectations of ‘why things are done they way they are’ are changed (Chan, 1997). Shifted expectations establish a different version of competency, and different behaviours and manners are more competitive than they would have been in the previous field (Chan, 2004).

Where Fields Collide: Youth Justice and (Rural) Policing

The YCJA is the most recent of the three statutes governing the processing of youth in contact with the law in Canada, beginning with the Juvenile Delinquents Act (JDA) in 1908 (SC 1908, 1908). Each Act distinguishes youth as significantly different from adults by considering youth incapable of full moral culpability and outlines what is considered reasonable punishment for youth as subjects of diminished culpability (Bandalli, 1998, 2000). The JDA was the first formalised regulation of youth in Canada and serves as one of the first Canadian legal structures to enforce a separation between the category of ‘child’ and the category of ‘adult’ (Department of Justice Canada, 2004). Under the JDA, police officers were expected to separate youth from adults, but the responses to the offender’s age were expected to happen primarily at the level of the judge (Department of Justice Canada, 2004; SC 1908, 1908). While there was no statutory recognition of police discretion during the tenure of the JDA, it is evident that police often opted not to charge young people (Bala and Anand, 2013).

The JDA was the longest enduring of the three Acts to date and was replaced by the Young Offenders Act (YOA) in 1984 (RSC 1985, 1984), which was intended to increase agency and due-process for justice-involved youth. Through employing the image of the state as a stern parent, the JDA was interested in the youth’s welfare within a structure of parental ownership over the youth (Department of Justice Canada, 2004). The YOA was intended to bring individual rights of youth to the forefront and focus youth justice on accountability over welfare (Bandalli, 2000; Davis-Barron, 2015; Doob and Sprott, 2004; Tonry and Doob, 2004). Practices intended to focus on individual rights included formalising discretionary measures for police officer, which intended to divert youth from court if less invasive measures could be employed in the opinion of the officer. To accomplish this, the YOA implemented alternative measures, a programme designed to divert youth accused of less serious offences from formal court while holding them accountable ‘in a manner which is visible to the community’ (Government of Canada, 1999). Despite allowing for alternative measures, the number of charged and incarcerated youth increased to the highest levels in history (Hylton, 1994). For a short duration, Canada incarcerated more youth than were incarcerated in the United States (Bala et al., 2009: 13; Corrado and Turnbull, 1992).

The YCJA, succeeding the YOA in 2003, attempted to account for the flaws and successes of both previous Acts and balance the conflicting urges towards welfare and recognition of the individual rights of youth (Bala and Anand, 2006, 2013; Hartnagel, 2004). As such, it is criticised as confusing due to its ‘competing principles and objectives’ (Corrado et al., 2007: 16). The balancing act reveals the impulses of the initial movement towards youth welfare and youth justice remain present alongside the YOA’s recognition of youth agency. Together, the impulses constructed a new schema for youth justice through conditions of youth accountability and expanded parental notification. The parental notifications under Section 26 of the YCJA obligates officers to notify the parent of the young person of the arrest, summons or ticket as soon as possible (SC 2002, 2003), and expands past the required notice for arrests or summons in the YOA (RSC 1985, 1984). The dual mobilisation of accountability and notification outlines the context of interactions between officers and youth; officers are expected to treat youth as subjects with diminished moral culpability and consider alternative measures to formal justice, while also responding to the young person as a rights-bearing being.

The YCJA introduced extrajudicial measures and extrajudicial sanctions, each intending to hold young people accountable in a ‘timely’ process while diverting young people from the courts (Government of Canada, 2013). While the YCJA encourages the use of extrajudicial measures in all possible cases, the use and types of measures often rely on police discretion (i.e. taking no further action, warnings, cautions or referrals). Crown prosecutors can also issue warnings or the youth can be subject to sanctions in formal provincial or territorial programmes. Extrajudicial sanctions are recommended if extrajudicial measures are insufficient to hold the young person accountable, can be applied before or after the youth is charged with an offence and has potential legal consequences if the youth fails to comply. Extrajudicial sanctions can be used as evidence for a subsequent offence. Section 39 (2) of the YCJA further adds sentencing conditions that obligate the court to use non-custodial measures unless all alternative measures have been ruled unreasonable for the circumstances (SC 2002, 2003). While the effectiveness and use of YCJA-mandated extrajudicial measures and sanctions are the subject of ongoing debate (see Ricciardelli et al., 2017 or Bala et al., 2009), they are not our intended focus in the current article.

While all of the Acts governing youth justice are federal, the implementation of youth justice is a provincial and territorial responsibility. Each province or territory has a unique trajectory and distinct development of youth justice (Alain et al., 2016). In the province under study, in 2016, 46.8 per cent of the populations live outside a census metropolitan area or a census agglomeration (Statistics Canada, 2017). A comparison with the national rate of rural living, which is 16.8 per cent, shows that a much higher portion of the province’s population lives in rural areas in comparison to the Canadian norm. Thus, the rural nature will continue to inform the political and social realities of the province (Ricciardelli et al., 2017).

Rurality, alongside sheer geographic size, ‘hinders the use of some modern policing practices tied to technology’, inhibits quick responses to community members’ needs and changed the role that justice and policing holds (Adorjan et al., 2017). Differences that exist between rural and urban policing have received much commentary, suggesting that rural officers perform many duties and fulfil roles beyond law enforcement in the community (Spencer and Patterson, 2016; Crank, 1990; Decker, 1979; Fielding, 2005; Liederbach and Frank, 2003; Pelfrey, 2007; Sandy and Devine, 1978). Officers in rural communities are expected to act as social workers, peacekeepers and babysitters (Huey and Ricciardelli, 2015), while occupying the roles of problem-solving, general service provision and crime prevention (Liederbach and Frank, 2003: 57; see also Decker, 1979). As such, the field of rural policing is distinct from the field of urban policing, a division felt to a uniquely high degree in the implementation of the YCJA in the province under study.

Method

Data collection involved 104 semi-structured interviews (including follow-up interviews) and 31 focus groups, conducted between 2014 and 2018 with police officers working in rural areas of a province in Atlantic Canada. When conducting interviews, researchers were actively putting in place extrajudicial measures tied to police practice, as per the YCJA; measures that previously did not exist in the province. Participants (n = 134) were police officers of different ranks with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). Interviews and focus groups occurred either in detachments across the province or in the regional headquarters. All participants had experience working with youth. Interviews and focus group were between 30 and 90 minutes in duration, a broad interview guide was used, but conversational paths led by participants were always prioritised. A demographic survey was completed, as well as informed consent, prior to each interview or focus group. Males were overrepresented in the sample, as they are overrepresented in the police service; officers’ ages ranged from 24 to 49, and the majority reported having some post-secondary education. Length of service ranged from just out of training to over 26 years of experience.

All interviews and focus groups were voice recorded and transcribed verbatim.¹ Coding involved a semi-structured constructed grounded thematic approach (Charmaz, 2006) and QRS NVivo software. A codebook was constructed from the data and, after analytic directions were taken from data, a more focused grounded theory approach led us back through the interview transcriptions to direct and selectively code (Charmaz, 2006) the major themes as well as more narrowed and focused sub-themes. All data presented are edited for readability and grammar when necessary but without affecting meaning or vernacular.

Results

The idealised ‘competent’ officer

Changing objective conditions changes the field and habitus of policing and redefines what it is to be a competent officer. Each change to the field reorients the field of competition, newly defining what practices are valued. With the introduction of the YCJA, the field of youth justice changed; in response, the fields it interacts with also changed. The ‘perfectly competent officer’ idealised under the YOA – that is, the officer whom one Unit Commander describes as the officer to ‘charge, charge, charge’, – also had to transform into the new vision of competence endorsed under the YCJA. As officers and Unit Commanders explain, the re-envisioned competent officer is defined by proactivity, both as a method of policing and an aspect of knowledge.

New generation and proactive methods as competence

Bourdieu indicates through his discussion of systems of reproduction that new members of groups are trained in habits expected to make the agent fit into the group’s environment and social spaces (Bourdieu, 2000a). As a field connected to, but not synonymous with, the youth justice field, new members of the policing field are inscribed with the policing habitus; educational practices prepare the new member for life in their field, but also serve as an access point to the field of youth justice. The impact of that access point holds ramifications for the feeling and expression of competence, understood both externally and internally. Weaved throughout external (other officers, commanders, civilians) and internal (self) judgements of competency and reflected in the contemporary policing habitus are discussions of the different styles of policing. Certain officers are interpreted as able to ‘get’ youth justice. The external judgement is offered particularly towards the newer generation of officers. Consider a focus group discussion among Unit Commanders:

Peter:

I know there are going to be those out there that go, ‘yeah, younger Members don’t want to do the work’ but I don’t. I think they have a good grasp of [the] YCJA. The old school guys are like fuck – the good old days.

Brian:

Charge, charge, charge.

Paul:

We got some Members that are like ‘no, no, you take it a little easy, you don’t have to charge’.

George:

And let’s be honest to put someone through alternative measures or extra judicial sanctions, it still takes work, still takes time. We hear the old sayings, ‘well if I’m going to do all that paperwork, I’m just going to send him to Court’, but at the end of the day he’s right, we’re noticing that the younger generation, they’re getting [it] 100%, and they’re getting it and understand it. And they’re the Officers that we’re seeing on (sic) the school parking lots talking to the kids when they’re hanging around on the steps or the Mall parking lot. (Italics added for emphasis)

Paul:

They’re proactive.

George:

They are. Maybe it’s an age thing or maybe it’s just they get it.

Superiors consider the newer generation of officers to be more competent at navigating youth justice and the YCJA. More senior officers describe the newer generation of officers pursuing proactive practices of policing and opening lines of communication with local youth through positive social interactions in spaces that are comfortable for the young people. While the Unit Commanders pose these pursuits as a natural understanding and competence in newer officers, framing this conversation through the systems of (re)production of the policing habitus demonstrates the ways competence is learned. The shift to the YCJA in the field of youth justice means that the objective conditions that the older generation of officers were educated to fit into no longer exist, and the newer generation of officers are educated in different practices that (in)form a different habitus with a different set of objective conditions. An officer nearing retirement reflects on the said shift in stating:

for the past 10 or 11 years, I’ve pushed the theory and the priority of the force behind [the YCJA], not that I go out [to] intermingle with the kids at school. That’s what the young people [young officers] are doing. We do have issues sometimes with the ones that have 25 years of service and now they have this thing about going in the school to do a visit or a talk. They are sort of like, ‘gee, what am I supposed to talk to them about?’

The pull towards systems of community policing which rely upon establishing ‘“closeness” with the community’ is one already documented in scholarship on rural policing (Decker, 1979; Manning, 1983; Adorjan et al., 2017); rural officers frequently fulfil ‘informal’ committee roles and address more community concerns than their urban counterparts (Liederbach and Frank, 2003: 57). The Unit Commanders discuss the actions of the younger officers as new and more reflective of new realities of policing alongside the YCJA. Their practices reflect a proactive version of community policing, a set of practices oriented to ‘community-based policing and problem solving’ (Clarke, 2006: 3). Approaching young people in spaces like their school and the mall demonstrates the proactive philosophy that it is better to ‘act rather than to react’ (Clarke, 2006: 4), referring to the pursuit of strategies for proactive community policing where the competent officer engages in a proactive closeness with the community of interest.

Knowledge uptake and proactive acquisition as competency

Competency as embodied in the proactive policing habitus is further understood through the acquisition and uptake of knowledge of the YCJA. RCMP officers receive some training in youth justice and the YCJA as part of their initial training. For those who were already officers when the YCJA was passed, there is an online course intended to educate the officers on the YCJA and how to police in accordance with the Act. One officer recalls little training on the legislation; ‘I can’t even remember having a formal sit down going through the whole YCJA or anything like that, it was more just a learn as you go kind of thing’. Those viewed as competent officers by senior officers and fellow officer were those who know and employ the YCJA. Another Unit Commander explained,

Johnathan:

You can do the course online and just go off and forget about it or you can look at it in depth and how can it apply to you. You always got to look for it, for me, it’s the positive, how can I get positive out of this, whether it’s a charge or whatever, will that person learn. And with the YCJA you have that opportunity.

Johnathan describes the ideal uptake of the knowledge – treating the law as a tool to enact positive change in the young person with whom the officer is interacting. Objectively, the Unit Commander illustrates an image of the competent officer who takes to heart the law of the YCJA and uses that to make the best changes in interactions with youth. Subjectively, the Unit Commander asserts their competency as an officer by describing the competent actions as those he endeavours to take.

Regarding the field of competition, the officer who is able to uptake, interpret, and use the knowledge of the YCJA is more competitive than officers who cannot. An officer offers an example of how knowledge is fundamental to identifying competence, demonstrating similar themes to the Unit Commander’s comments. The officer describes intervening in an argument between two officers:

Shelley:

He’s a traffic guy and she’s not. And he goes and gives out a bunch of tickets to youth . . . Well, she said, ‘You can’t be doing that all the time and you need to notify the parent’. ‘No, I don’t’ . . . And I said, ‘Yeah, you do actually . . . You’re supposed to serve a notice to the parent’. ‘No way’ [he said]. And he even called his boss and they said, ‘No, we don’t have to’ . . . I took the training and I was the one who trained the trainers . . . I know it. So I went in and hauled up the YCJA, brought it up, went to the page, and said, ‘Here you go, you better have a read’.

The officer’s words offer a precise moment of defining competence and incompetence through the acquisition and use of YCJA knowledge. As someone trained in the YCJA, the officer internally defines himself as competent. The ‘she’ in Shelley’s example is externally identified as competent, as she was correct in her understanding of her tasks under the YCJA, which included notifications to parents for tickets issued to young people. The officer who is wrong in their knowledge of the YCJA is considered less competent externally, exemplified by the ‘he’ in Shelley’s example who is incorrect and, thus, must pursue more knowledge to be more competitive in this field of policing. Overall, these excerpts demonstrate the way competence is taken up internally and externally through the treatment and uptake of knowledge of youth law.

Anxieties and the Imagined Incompetent Officer

Against the conception of the idealised competent officer, the perceived incompetent officer serves as a source of discomfort for officers. The incompetent officer is unwilling or unable to fulfil the expectations of the policing field under the objective conditions of the YCJA (e.g. the generation of officers who ‘charge, charge, charge’) and demonstrates incompetency by acting in contradistinction to the current competent officer.

The officers’ descriptions of good or bad, competent or incompetent, betrays the officers’ anxieties and the effort of being considered competent. Given the YCJA encourages the use of officer discretion, negotiating competence and incompetence is ongoing and present in every decision. One officer reflects on this negotiation and discretion as interpreting the law:

There’s a lot of room there and a lot of different aspects of how you speak to people, that can totally change a situation. There’s officers who show up to a house and have everything talked out and there’s other officers who will go and someone ends up getting tasered . . . There’s not a whole lot set in stone . . . Because you have human beings trying to do . . . or interpreting the law and then trying to administer as they see fit.

The officer’s response offers a glimpse into the struggle to be a competent officer, given officers act in different ways with drastically different outcomes. Guided by and interpreted through the policing habitus, their actions achieve the outcome the field demands. The image of competence illustrates the desired outcome: in the policing habitus under the YCJA, the competent officer pursues positive changes. The new post-YCJA policing field proscribes the need to keep peace or intervene in the least invasive way to cause positive changes; the officer whose answer to a situation is to taser, for instance, is considered incompetent compared to the officer who can de-escalate a situation. Exemplifying the embodiment of post-YCJA habitus, the officer who pursues diversionary tactics is valued over an officer who opts to charge.

Embedded in this dichotomy is the struggle to be considered competent, which translates into officers’ positionality in the hierarchy of the policing field. Officers describe several aspects of policing that cause anxiety regarding the officers’ standing. These include the discomfort of having unclear roles, inadequate authority and discontent with the ways policing work is interpreted as inhibited by the YCJA.

Unclear Roles and Authority

Rural officers describe feeling tension due to ‘role strain’, as the officers are expected to fulfil many roles at once (Huey and Ricciardelli, 2015), resulting in ambiguity around what their role entails. Said discomfort reflects moments that the policing habitus intersects with another habitus (e.g. social work – see Chan, 1997; Reiner, 1985; Huey and Ricciardelli, 2015). The officers interviewed describe instances where they provide services they deemed to be outside of police duties and authority, occasions that affect rural officers far more frequently. Their discomfort arises from navigating competency when the rules for competence are unclear. To be competitive in their field, officers may attempt to judge the ‘good officer’ performance in a situation that may not be legally defined as their role, as this officer does:

Kevin:

. . . [W]e have a memorandum of understanding with Child, Youth and Family Services, but sometimes they’ll impose. We get it a lot. They’ll impose a curfew which is not a Court order curfew and it drives me absolutely insane. They’ll call us and be like ‘Hey Constable X, so-and-so didn’t show up for their 11 p.m. curfew’. ‘Well okay, is it [a] Court order?’ ‘No’. But then at the same time the onus is still on me to look for that person and to bring them back. But if I pass them and they say ‘bitch I’m not going home tonight’ and I say ‘well okay, alright you should really be a nicer person and we’re going home, come on let’s get in [the] truck and I’m going to give you a ride home’. ‘Nah fuck that, not tonight’. What do you do? It’s not a Court order curfew, that’s really, really hard to do . . . Maybe they’ll call, their curfew is at 11 and they’ll call you at 3 and you’re out until 6 a.m. looking for these people because you don’t want to go home and [find] this person is dead in the streets somewhere and you’re like ‘shit, I went home and left that’.

The officer describes feelings of discomfort and obligation associated with fulfilling roles expected of rural officers beyond those of law enforcement, which rely upon appeals to the officer’s notion of what is the ‘correct’ way to behave in the situation. Their responses demonstrate the moments in which an officer is practicing competence in a social worker role, as a proactive problem-solver (Huey and Ricciardelli, 2015; Clarke, 2006; Cordner and Biebel, 2005). However, as the excerpt demonstrates, efforts to be proactive and problem solve, which are demanded by the new policing field, do not intersect comfortably in the field of youth justice. Officers describe how the YCJA does not equip them to address situations they are asked to intervene in, as they are beyond the RCMP’s jurisdiction (e.g. instances in group homes). Many officers describe situations with youth where they wanted to intervene, but feel they lack the legal authority (e.g. observing youth verbally abuse group home employees). Being unclear of their role makes officers feel less confident that they can make the correct, competent decision; they are left unclear of their respective competence level as an officer.

The Act inhibits the job

While policing and youth justice fields must function together, they do not share goals, practices and corresponding habitus. The prescribed behaviours and habits of the youth justice field intend to balance youth as rights bearing and as less morally culpable; officers expect their role to be law enforcement (Huey and Ricciardelli, 2015). Aside from causing discomfort and anxiety when the officer feels they are being asked to occupy a different role, the changes to the policing habitus that result from the intersection with the field of youth justice lead officers to frequently feel they cannot do law enforcement. The theme does not reflect on any of the capabilities of the YCJA itself, but rather on the perception of officers who engage with the YCJA and who feel inhibited by the Act. The feeling is perpetrated in two ways: the officers spend large amounts of time doing YCJA-mandated tasks they consider tangential to their job, and officers perceive the Act as ‘toothless’.

Section 26 of the YCJA outlines the required notices to parents, requiring a parent, guardian or known adult of a young person be notified of any arrest, detention, ticket or summons the young person receives (SC 2002, 2003). Despite one officer who describes their job as ‘just show up and deal with something’, the YCJA mandates the officer spend considerable time doing paperwork and sending notices to parents, tasks considered tangential to the primary job of officers (Chan, 1997). In a discussion among Unit Commanders, they describe the officers’ contentions with time spent on seemingly tangential tasks:

Interviewer:

Are there other things that are concerning the job, just in general in terms of like concerns on safety, be it physical, psychological, legal?

Bella:

What is the catchphrase, do more with less. It seems like every . . . presentation this week we’re going to.

Sven:

We’ve picked up about 10 hours.

Mary:

When are you going to do this for us and it’s always more and more and more and like I said.

Henry:

More reporting, more steps in the process.

Bella:

And manpower shortages.

Aaron:

You spend more time reporting up than actually doing anything. They’re so involved with what you do.

Alongside feeling they spend time on work that is not the job of an officer, questions of competence remain:

. . . [I]t’s just the time and how the force is run . . . it doesn’t allow for good work . . . [T]here’s no money for overtime . . . There’s no money for extra resources like for this stuff . . . We’re going to take today and do something for the youth . . . [A] good officer will do everything in their power, probably work themselves into the ground, and be all over the place like a chicken with its head cut off and try and go the extra mile. But they are really out on a limb because they’re probably putting in a couple of hours free . . . And that goes against the grain.

In the two excerpts, the concern over time and available resources to fulfil mandated actions is a dominating theme – compounding these concerns are the reporting and notification required by the YCJA. The Unit Commanders’ sentiment that they are trying to ‘do more with less’, alongside the officer’s understanding of the good officer being the one who goes ‘the extra mile’ both indicate discomfort in the expected daily tasks of an officer. Paperwork and notices comprise a significant portion of the officer’s time – when considered against the tasks an officer does ‘just show up and deal’ with, the officer suggests that the limited time and resources do not lend well to officers being proactive and seeking out relations in the community. Given the YCJA relies on proactive and community policing, the constraints of time and resources directly impact the ability of officers to engage in what they consider their primary role. With such restraints, field members and supervisors can question officers’ competence, both internally and externally. Externally, officers who cannot be proactive and community-based appear incompetent to other field members and their superiors. The officer above demonstrates the struggle to consider oneself competent and competitive on the field of policing when they do not feel they can fulfil the expectations of being proactive. The habitus structures interpretations of the ‘good officer’ or competent officer and takes on much more than their role, but organisational culture prevents officers from effectively doing so.

The second way the Act is perceived as inhibitory is the notion of the YCJA as ‘toothless’. The idea here is that the law exists to protect and thus, the officer is a manifest protector. Law that fails to protect only inhibits the officers from fulfilling their roles as protectors through law enforcement. Consider the following descriptions:

Christopher:

You can’t do anything with the kids because of the YCJA. You can’t police, you can’t do your job, because they know what you can and can’t do . . . They expect you to jump for them.

Further:

Gary:

. . . We’ll have the same reaction from the kids that we get from the parents . . . I know it went from the YOA to the you can’t jail me Act, the YCJA.

Nicholas:

We’re very limited in what we can do . . . In terms of enforcement.

These officers’ excerpts illustrate the characterisation of the YCJA as empowering to criminal youth and disempowering to officers to enforce the law. In the first, the officer describes how young people mobilising the Act to their benefit makes the officer unable to enforce law; the officer perceives the youth possess power to demand particular treatment. The second officer’s words directly show how they perceive the YCJA to limit the enforcement powers of officers by mandating that alternative or extrajudicial measures be used as often as possible, describing that the YCJA entirely disallows imprisonment.² Here, the priority officers award law enforcement is also demonstrated through their critiques of the YCJA. Reactive enforcement of the law is considered to be the primary component of the officer’s job and, thus, the officer describes a feeling of ‘toothlessness’. Such a conception of the YCJA as inhibitory reflects an older policing habitus, which would still have practices and attitudes present from former fields. These practices are at odds with changes felt in the policing field in response to the transformation of the field of youth justice post-YCJA, as the officers are mandated to engage in more diversionary tactics than they were required to engage in under the YOA. The perceived tension between new and old habitus’ reflects tensions of new and old visions of competence that are currently at odds.

Discussion and Conclusion

Thematic analysis of interviews and focus groups demonstrate that the introduction of the YCJA resulted in a change to the field of rural policing; the resulting change to the policing habitus changed the notions of the competent and incompetent officer. Overall, the data display two primary themes – imaginings of the competent officer and discomfort about being considered incompetent. These two themes further dissect into specific sub-themes. The idealised competent officer, assumed to be of the newer generation of officers, is proactive and community-based. Furthermore, the idealised competent officer is expected to be knowledgeable and able to apply knowledge of the YCJA comfortably. The illustration of the incompetent officer stands in opposition to the competent officer and features largely in the discomforts officers described. Concerns over unclear roles and unsure authority reflect discomfort about incompetence, as well as feelings of being inhibited by the Act from fulfilling an officer’s primary role.

Ideas of the competent and incompetent officer trace through the actions and decisions of officers on a daily basis. Unit Commanders and officers have a clear image of the competent officer and the incompetent officer. Their comments illustrate the way competence is naturalised; officers are expected to fulfil the expectations of proactive problem-solving reflecting a post-YCJA policing habitus. Despite the discomforts the officers express, they perform the competence with which they wish to be identified. Despite describing that they receive little training on the YCJA, officers also describe themselves as confident in their knowledge of the YCJA. Officers perform the role of the competent officer despite discussing ongoing anxieties arising from the shifts in the field and the new expected practices. Concurrent with Bourdieu’s understanding of habituses existing in tension, in which the training of newer generations replicates the conditions of the old, officers and Unit Commanders reflect on both the idea of the competent proactive officer and the anxiety of not having proper authority. The strain between these two notions reveal that the new conditions of the policing field in a rural Atlantic province is at odds with some lingering attitudes in the habitus corresponding with the former field. This strain could explain officers simultaneously striving to be considered competent in the new field by embodying a new habitus while continuing to demonstrate concerns about their inability to fulfil the conditions of a prior habitus.

Our article does have limitations, specifically we are working in one rural Atlantic province and thus our results may not be generalisable to other provinces and territories. Future researchers in the area, we suggest, must expand the scope of analysis to other provinces and territories to help continue to fill this lacunae in knowledge. In particular, there is a need for research into urban areas that would better flesh out the unique attributes of both areas of policing. In the current article, our focus is not on comparing urban and rural policing, instead we focus on the policing of youth in a rural province. Furthermore, to fully understand interpretations of the competent and incompetent police officer, across time and space with the introduction of the YCJA, longitudinal data or data that ask senior officers to reflect on changes in policing practices over time may be warranted. Here, researchers can reflect on changes in youth policing in further lines of inquiry through a longitudinal analysis, which may shed further light on the long-term effects of the changes felt within the field of policing when changes are made to the field of youth justice. In addition, we encourage future researchers, employing diverse methods, to continue to investigate the impacts of field and habitus on policing practices more broadly.

In this article, we offer insight into how fields of youth criminal justice and rural policing intercept and impact practices that reflect the policing habitus embodied by a cadre of officers. The changes the implementation of the YCJA brought to the youth criminal justice field are still reverberating through the field of policing, despite being implemented in 2003. These changes lead to the need for officers to change their practices, changes in the standard of ‘competence’ and in officers expressing discomfort over their role. Officers are asked to interact with youth as simultaneously autonomous and less morally culpable; unsure about balancing these goals, the officers engage in more behaviours intended to protect themselves. Changes in youth justice lead to different policing behaviours; Unit commander reward and respect new models of policing – proactive community policing and bureaucratic material – and knowledge is mobilised as protection from both the public and the policing organisation.

Footnotes

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Taryn Hepburn

Notes

Author biographies

Taryn Hepburn is a PhD student in the Department of Law and Legal Studies at Carleton University. Her research focuses on the regulation of young people in Canada, specifically attending to governance through criminal law.

Dale Spencer is an Associate Professor in the Department of Law and Legal Studies at Carleton University. Formerly a Banting Fellow and an Ontario Early Research Award recipient, his main research interests are violence, sport, victimization, policing, youth, and conceptions of homelessness, domicile, and the law.

Rosemary Ricciardelli is a Professor of Sociology, the Coordinator for Criminology, and Co-Coordinator for Police Studies at Memorial University. Elected to the Royal Society of Canada, Her research is centered on evolving understandings of gender, vulnerabilities, risk, and experiences and issues within different facets of the criminal justice system.

References

Adorjan

Ricciardelli

Spencer

(2017) Youth perceptions of police in rural Atlantic Canada. Police Practice and Research 18(6): 556–569. DOI: 10.1080/15614263.2017.1363961.

Alain

Corrado

Reid

(2016) Implementing and Working with the Youth Criminal Justice Act across Canada (Institute of Public Administration of Canada Series in Public Management and Governance). Toronto, ON, Canada; Buffalo, NY; London: University of Toronto Press.

Bala

Anand

(2006) The first months under the Youth Criminal Justice Act: A survey and analysis of case law. Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice 46: 251–272.

Bala

Anand

(2013) Youth Criminal Justice Law. Toronto, ON, Canada: Irwin Law.

Bala

Carrington

Roberts

(2009) Evaluating the Youth Criminal Justice Act after five years: A qualified success. Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice 51(2): 131–167.

Bandalli

(1998) Abolition of the presumption of doli incapax and the criminalisation of children. Howard Journal of Criminal Justice 37(2): 114–123.

Bandalli

(2000) Children, responsibility and the new youth justice. In: Goldson

(ed.) The New Youth Justice. Lyme Regis: Russell House, 81–95.

Bazemore

Griffiths

(2003) Police reform, restorative justice and restorative policing. Police Practice and Research 4(4): 335–346.

Bourdieu

(1977) Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. Available at: http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&db=nlabk&AN=589175 (accessed 11 June 2019).

10.

Bourdieu

(2000a) Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (Reprint 1984 Edition). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

11.

Bourdieu

(2000b) Pascalian Meditations. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

12.

Bourdieu

(2010) Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology 16), vol. 25. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

13.

Bourdieu

Wacquant

LJD

(1992) An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

14.

Chan

(1997) Changing Police Culture: Policing in a Multicultural Society. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press.

15.

Chan

(2004) Using Pierre Bourdieu’s framework for understanding police culture. Droit et société 56–57: 327–346.

16.

Chan

(2008) Police culture: A brief history of a concept. In: Anthony

Cunneen

(eds) The Critical Criminology Companion. Leichhardt, NSW, Australia: Hawkins Press, 218–227.

17.

Charmaz

(2006) Constructing Grounded Theory. London; Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

18.

Chatterjee

Elliott

(2003) Restorative policing in Canada: The royal Canadian mounted police, community justice forums, and the Youth Criminal Justice Act. Police Practice and Research 4(4): 347–359.

19.

Clarke

(2006) Proactive policing: Standing on the shoulders of community-based policing. Police Practice and Research 7(1): 3–17.

20.

Cordner

Biebel

(2005) Problem-oriented policing in practice*. Criminology & Public Policy 4(2): 155–180.

21.

Corrado

Turnbull

(1992) A comparative examination of the modified justice model in the United Kingdom and the United States. In: Corrado

(ed.) Juvenile Justice in Canada: A Theoretical and Analytical Assessment. Toronto, ON, Canada: Butterworths, 75–136.

22.

Corrado

Gronsdahl

MacAlister

(2007) The Youth Criminal Justice Act: Can the Supreme Court of Canada balance the competing and conflicting models of youth justice. Criminal Law Quarterly 53(1): 14–66.

23.

Crank

(1990) The influence of environmental and organizational factors on police style in urban and rural environments. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 27(2): 166–189.

24.

Davis-Barron

(2015) Youth and the Criminal Law in Canada. New York: LexisNexis.

25.

Decker

(1979) The rural County Sheriff: An issue in social control. Criminal Justice Review 4(2): 97–111.

26.

Department of Justice Canada (2004) The Evolution of Juvenile Justice in Canada. Ottawa, ON, Canada: Department of Justice Canada.

27.

Donnermeyer

DeKeseredy

Dragiewicz

(2016) Policing rural Canada and the United States. In: Mawby

Yarwood

(eds) Rural Policing and Policing the Rural: A Constable Countryside? London: Routledge, 37–46. Available at: http://www.tandfebooks.com/isbn/9781315607191 (accessed 13 May 2019).

28.

Doob

Sprott

(2004) Youth justice in Canada. In: Tonry

Doob

(eds) Youth Crime and Youth Justice: Comparative and Cross-National Perspectives (Crime and justice: A review of research), vol. 31. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 185–242.

29.

Fielding

(1995) Community Policing: Clarendon Studies in Criminology. Oxford; New York: Clarendon Press; Oxford University Press.

30.

Fielding

(2005) Concepts and theory in community policing. Howard Journal of Criminal Justice 44(5): 460–472.

31.

Garriott

(2013) Policing and Contemporary Governance the Anthropology of Police in Practice. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

32.

Government of Canada (1999) Alternative measures for youth in Canada – Archived. Available at: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/en/pub/85-002-x/85-002-x1999008-eng.pdf?st=p2GOdnpK (accessed 10 September 2019).

33.

Government of Canada (2013) Department of Justice – Youth Justice – Youth Justice Renewal. Available at: https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/cj-jp/yj-jj/tools-outils/sheets-feuillets/measu-mesur.html (accessed 10 September 2019).

34.

Greene

Mastrofski

(eds) (1988) Community Policing: Rhetoric or Reality. New York: Praeger.

35.

Hartnagel

(2004) The rhetoric of youth justice in Canada. Criminal Justice 4(4): 355–374.

36.

Hoffmann

(1999) The meanings of competency. Journal of European Industrial Training 23(6): 275–286.

37.

Huey

Ricciardelli

(2015) ‘This isn’t what I signed up for’: When police officer role expectations conflict with the realities of general duty police work in remote communities. International Journal of Police Science & Management 17(3): 194–203. DOI: 10.1177/1461355715603590.

38.

Hylton

(1994) The Young Offender Act, Ten Years after implementation (KE 9445 Y686 1994, Public Safety Canada Library). Ottawa, ON, Canada: Canadian Criminal Justice Association.

39.

Jones

DJV

(1996) Crime and Policing in the Twentieth Century: The South Wales Experience. Cardiff: University of Wales Press.

40.

Jones

(2014) ‘The regular routine’: Proactive policing and adolescent development among young, poor Black men. New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development 2014(143): 33–54.

41.

Jones

Ruddell

Summerfield

(2018) Community policing: Perceptions of officers policing indigenous communities. Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice 61: 41–65.

42.

Jorgensen

(1981) Transferring trouble – The initiation of reactive policing. Canadian Journal of Criminology 23(3): 257–278.

43.

Liederbach

Frank

(2003) Policing mayberry: The work routines of small-town and rural officers. American Journal of Criminal Justice 28(1): 53–72.

44.

Manning

(1983) Community policing symposium: Police community relations. American Journal of Police 3: 205–228.

45.

Manning

(2003) Policing Contingencies. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Available at: http://chicago.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.7208/chicago/9780226503523.001.0001/upso-9780226503516 (accessed 6 November 2019).

46.

Mawby

Yarwood

(2016) Rural Policing and Policing the Rural: A Constable Countryside? London: Routledge. Available at: http://www.tandfebooks.com/isbn/9781315607191 (accessed 13 May 2019).

47.

Moyle

Coomber

(2017) Bourdieu on supply: Utilizing the ‘theory of practice’ to understand complexity and culpability in heroin and crack cocaine user-dealing. European Journal of Criminology 14(3): 309–328.

48.

Pelfrey

(2007) Style of policing adopted by rural police and deputies: An analysis of job satisfaction and community policing. Policing: An International Journal 30(4): 620–636.

49.

Ratcliffe

(2003) Intelligence-Led Policing. Canberra, ACT, Australia: Australian Institute of Criminology.

50.

Reiner

(1985) The Politics of the Police. Brighton; New York: Wheatsheaf Books; St. Martin’s Press.

51.

Ricciardelli

(2018) “Risk It Out, Risk It Out”: Occupational and Organizational Stresses in Rural Policing. Police Quarterly 21(4): 415–439. DOI: 10.1177/1098611118772268.

52.

Ricciardelli

Crichton

Swiss

, et al. (2017) From knowledge to action? The Youth Criminal Justice Act and use of extrajudicial measures in youth policing. Police Practice and Research 18(6): 599–611. DOI: 10.1080/15614263.2017.1363971.

53.

RSC 1985 (1984) Young Offenders Act. Available at: https://www.canlii.org/en/ca/laws/stat/rsc-1985-c-y-1/latest/rsc-1985-c-y-1.html?resultIndex=1 (accessed 11 October 2018).

54.

Sandy

Devine

(1978) Four stress factors unique to rural patrol. Police Chief 45(9): 42–44.

55.

SC 1908 (1908) Juvenile Delinquents Act.

56.

SC 2002 (2003) Youth Criminal Justice Act. Available at: https://www.canlii.org/en/ca/laws/stat/sc-2002-c-1/latest/sc-2002-c-1.html?autocompleteStr=Youth+&autocompletePos=2&searchUrlHash=AAAAAQALcHJlc3VtcHRpdmUAAAAAAQ&offset=0 (accessed 4 December 2018).

57.

Sims

(1988) Small Town and Rural Police. Springfield, IL: C. C. Thomas.

58.

Spencer

(2009) Habit(us), Body Techniques and Body Callusing: An Ethnography of Mixed Martial Arts. Body & Society 15(4): 119–143. DOI: 10.1177/1357034X09347224.

59.

Spencer

Patterson

(2016) Still Worlds Apart?: Habitus, Field, and Masculinities in Victim and Police Interactions. In: Spencer

Walklate

(eds) Reconceptualizing Critical Victimology: Interventions and Possibilities, pp. 15–32. Available at: http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&db=nlabk&AN=1211911 (accessed 14 January 2019).

60.

Statistics Canada (2017) 2016 Census: Focus of Geography 98-404-X2016001, Statistics Canada Catalogue. Ottawa, ON, Canada: Statistics Canada.

61.

Thurman

McGarrell

(2015) Community Policing in a Rural Setting. London: Routledge.

62.

Tonry

Doob

(eds) (2004) Youth Crime and Youth Justice: Comparative and Cross-National Perspectives (Crime and justice: A review of research), vol. 31. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.

63.

Yarwood

(2005) Crime concern and policing in the countryside: Evidence from Parish councillors in West Mercia Constabulary, England. Policing and Society 15(1): 63–82.