We interrogate the explanatory limits of routine activity theory and the victim–offender overlap by determining whether conventional leisure activities, especially those associated with cultural capital, are victimogenic; whether this has more to do with target congruence and less with the characteristics or contexts of those activities; and whether these dynamics vary across gender and race. Using a large sample of high-school students ( n = 2342), we find that cultural capital activity is significantly associated with violent victimization even after traditional victimogenic factors associated with the victim–offender overlap are addressed. We also find that cultural capital activity is similarly victimogenic across gender, but varies significantly across race. Black youth in particular experience more violent victimization than their peers for engaging in cultural capital activities, supporting target congruence and identity-based explanations of victimization rather than being a function of the situational qualities of the leisure activities themselves.

Purpose - Black Canadians have a historically tenuous relationship with the police. Negative perceptions of the police held by Black people have traditionally resulted from high levels of police contact and perceived negative treatment during these encounters. Well-publicized instances of police violence involving Black civilians have also fostered hostility and mistrust of the police, often resulting in social unrest. Recently, in the wake of George Floyd's death at the hands of American police, people across Canada rallied in support of the Black Lives Matter social movement and calls to defund the police entered mainstream political consciousness. At the same time, police leaders have vehemently argued that racial bias within Canadian policing has been greatly reduced as the result of various reform efforts. Design/methodology/approach - This paper explores the police racism debate in Canada through an analysis of three waves of survey data collected between 1994 and 2019. Findings - Despite well-publicized reform efforts, the authors' findings demonstrate that little has changed over the past 25 years. Black people still report much higher rates of police stop and search activity than people from other racial backgrounds. Furthermore, racial disparities in negative police contact remain strongly significant after controlling for other theoretically relevant factors, including self-reported deviance and community crime levels. Finally, reflecting their negative experiences, most Black people still perceive Canadian law enforcement as racially biased. Nonetheless, the data do reveal one significant change: the proportion of white people who perceive police discrimination against Black people has increased dramatically over this same time period. The paper concludes by discussing the prospects of meaningful reform in light of the current findings. Originality/value - This paper contributes to the literature on race and policing through an examination of 25 years of survey data across three waves of collection.

We examine public perceptions of the police complaints system in Ontario, Canada, using results from a general population survey of Toronto residents. Most of our respondents have indicated that they would file a formal complaint if subject to police verbal abuse or brutality. Yet, a large proportion of these same respondents did not believe their complaint would be treated fairly. Consistent with the broader literature, these perceptions of unfair treatment are particularly widespread among Black respondents and those with low levels of confidence in local police. Despite decades of structural reforms, only few respondents indicated that they would report their complaint to a civilian police oversight agency explicitly tasked with reviewing police complaints. Regardless of racial background, most respondents nonetheless believe that police complaints should be investigated by independent (nonpolice) investigators. We conclude with a discussion of the recent legislative reform efforts that have taken place in the province.

The current study seeks to extend routine activity theory by examining how gender conditions the relationship between leisure activities and adolescent delinquency. Using OLS regression with a sample of high school students from Toronto (n=2,209), we find that (1) engaging in more unstructured and unsupervised activities with peers is associated with delinquency more strongly for boys than for girls, but is associated with substance use equally across gender; (2) this pattern is likely due to gender differences in the locations or contexts of leisure activities; and (3) prosocial leisure activities are associated with less delinquency only for boys. In general, routine activity theory appears apt at explaining the substance use of boys and girls, but is less capable of explaining the property and violent offending of girls. We discuss our findings and their implications for the growing body of research extending routine activity theory to explain gender differences in delinquency.

This chapter examines the relationship between ethnicity and crime victimisation in Trinidad and Tobago. Very little is known about this issue in the Caribbean and indeed, most countries have not collected data that would allow for an examination of this issue. While Trinidad and Tobago has recently begun to collect data on race and crime, these data have not been examined. This chapter will examine official crime data for murder, woundings and shooting, robbery, sexual offences, burglaries and break-ins, larceny and larceny of motor vehicles, and domestic violence. Ethnicity data for murder are available from 2001 to 2013, while for domestic violence data are available from 2012 to 2014. Data for all other crimes are available from 2010 to 2014. Data from the 2012 United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and 2014 American Barometers Victimization Surveys will also be examined. The present chapter is exploratory and hopes to determine whether different ethnicities are over-represented as victims of crime. The chapter will also attempt to determine whether there are systematic patterns of over-representation and will offer explanations for the observed differences.

Scholarship is divided over whether youth from marginalized populations are stopped and searched by police primarily due to their illegal behaviours (functionalism), marginalized status (conflict theory), or both. We address this debate by comparing the police interactions experienced by a sample of high school students (N = 3,393) living at home with a sample of youth (N = 396) who have left home and are residing in shelters or on the streets of Toronto, Ontario. Logistic regression analysis demonstrates that after controlling for demographic and behavioural factors, black high school students are more likely than white high school students to report being stopped and searched by the police multiple times; this indicates that they are the victims of racially biased policing. In contrast, black and white street youth are equally likely to report being stopped and searched by the police on multiple occasions. We suggest that this is because all street youth, regardless of race, take part in high levels of deviant behaviour, which attracts police attention. We conclude that consensus theory is appropriate for explaining police stops and searches of street youth, whereas conflict theory is appropriate for explaining police stops and searches of black high school students.

With information supplied by a large ( n = 3393) sample of high school students from Toronto, this paper tests the assumption that three forms of leisure activity—peer, risky, and self-improving leisure—have a relatively independent impact upon patterns of offending and victimization. Although we find significant support for this proposition, we also find that traditional criminal motivations are still strongly related to criminal incidents, particularly offending behavior. The positive association between leisure and victimization includes, counter intuitively, the sort of self-improving leisure that might have been expected to reduce the risk of victimization. We discuss our findings in terms of the relationship between traditional motivational explanations of crime and newer, more situational ones.

With information supplied by a large (n = 3393) sample of high school students from Toronto, this paper tests the assumption that three forms of leisure activitypeer, risky, and self-improving leisurehave a relatively independent impact upon patterns of offending and victimization. Although we find significant support for this proposition, we also find that traditional criminal motivations are still strongly related to criminal incidents, particularly offending behavior. The positive association between leisure and victimization includes, counter intuitively, the sort of self-improving leisure that might have been expected to reduce the risk of victimization. We discuss our findings in terms of the relationship between traditional motivational explanations of crime and newer, more situational ones.

Anthony Doob's career as a criminologist has been distinguished by his commitment to evidence-based policy development and to making criminological research relevant not just to other scholars but, perhaps more importantly, to policy makers, criminal justice practitioners, and the public. This paper provides an overview of the underdeveloped state of evaluation research on crime prevention and policy in Canada and discusses some of the obstacles to conducting rigorous evaluations. Fortunately, these obstacles – which include a tendency to rely on ideology and intuition as opposed to empirical evidence and a lack of sufficient resources for evaluation studies – have not discouraged Doob in his efforts to improve our criminal laws and justice system so that they reflect the fundamental Canadian values of justice, fairness, and humanity. Through his own research and his promotion of others' research – through, for example, Criminological Highlights – he has worked tirelessly to promote interventions by the criminal justice system that are informed by these values as well as by sound empirical evidence as to their effectiveness.

ABSTRACT/RESUME The issue of race and crime is one of the most controversial topics in Canada. This paper begins by exploring various theoretical models that have attempted to explain why some racial minority groups appear to be over-represented in official crime statistics. An effort is made to highlight the divergent policy implications associated with each model and how effective solutions must directly consider how race interacts with other identity markers--including gender, age, social class, religion, and immigration status. The paper then move s on to a discussion of facial discrimination within the justice system. It is argued that the intersection of race and lower class position may contribute to the apparent disadvantage many minorities face when dealing with the police, the courts, and corrections. The paper then turns to the issue of criminal victimisation. Emphasis is placed on the high rates of violent victimisation experienced by both minority men and women in this country and how researchers and governments should address the problem of hate crime. The next section of the paper examines how race may interact with both social class and linguistic ability to impede access to high quality justice services. The paper concludes with a detailed discussion of data needs and the many obstacles that researchers face when trying to conduct research on these issues in Canada. It is argued that the academic community must play more of a leadership role and help establish a research agenda that will facilitate the development of effective policy initiatives. La question de la race et du crime est l'un des sujets les plus controverses au Canada. Ce document commence par explorer divers modeles theoriques qui ont tente d'expliquer pourquoi certains groupes de minorites raciales semblent etre surrepresentes dans les statistiques criminelles officielles. On s'efforce de souligner les implications politiques divergentes associees a chaque modele et comment des solutions efficaces doivent considerer directement la facon dont la race interagit avec d'autres marqueurs de l'identite, y compris le sexe, l'age, la classe sociale, la religion et le statut d'immigrant. Le document aborde ensuite la question de la discrimination raciale au sein du systeme judiciaire. On affirme que l'intersection de la race et du niveau inferieur de la classe sociale peut contribuer au desavantage apparent auquel plusieurs minorites font face lorsqu'ils ont a faire avec la police, les tribunaux et les services correctionnels. Le document traite ensuite de la question de la victimisation criminelle. L'auteur met l'accent sur les taux eleves de victimisation violente dont sont victimes les hommes et les femmes minoritaires dans ce pays et sur la facon dont Canadian Ethnic Studies/Etudes ethniques au Canada, XXXV, No. 3, 2003 les chercheurs et les gouvernements devraient s'attaquer au probleme des crimes motives par la haine. La prochaine section du document examine comment la race peut interagir avec la classe sociale et la capacite linguistique pour faire obstacle a l'acces a des services juridiques de haute qualite. Le document conclut avec une discussion detaillee sur les besoins en matiere de donnees et les nombreux obstacles auxquels se heurtent les chercheurs lorsqu'ils tentent de mener de la recherche sur ces questions au Canada. On soutient que la communaute universitaire doit jouer davantage un role de leader et aider a etablir un programme de recherche qui facilitera l'elaboration d'initiatives politiques efficaces. INTRODUCTION In October, 2002, The Toronto Star began publication of a series of articles on the topic of race and crime (see Rankin et al., 2002a, 2002b, 2002c). The Star's analysis of arrest data from the Toronto Police Service revealed that black people are highly over-represented in certain offence categories--including drug possession, drug trafficking, and serious violence. The Star maintained that this pattern of overrepresentation is consistent with the idea that the Toronto police engage in racial profiling and that minority offenders are treated more harshly after arrest than their white counterparts (Rankin et al. …

Canada has an international reputation for being a tolerant, diverse nation comprised of people from many racial, ethnic, cultural and religious groups. However, as with all heterogeneous countries, Canada has not escaped moral panics regarding immigrant criminality nor concerns about the possible discriminatory treatment of racial minorities by the criminal justice system. This chapter begins with a brief description of Canada’s immigration history and provides a profile of Canada’s current racial minority populations. The chapter then documents the over-representation of certain racial minority groups within the Canadian criminal justice system, and briefly explores patterns of minority victimization and offending. We next examine minority perceptions of the Canadian police and criminal courts and examine evidence of racial bias in the Canadian criminal justice system. The chapter concludes by arguing that Canada’s current ban on race-crime statistics not only prevents the thorough study of minority crime issues, but it also hinders efforts to eliminate racism from Canadian policing, court processes and corrections.

Both media coverage and public opinion suggest that immigrants are responsible for a high proportion of youth gang activity in Canada. Unfortunately, very little academic research has actually examined the extent and nature of youth gang activity in this country. Our paper attempts to address this gap in the literature through an analysis of data from a survey of Toronto high school students and street youth. Our results suggest that: 1) immigrant youth are less likely to report gang a! liation than their Canadian born counterparts; 2) although Black and Hispanic youth are more likely to report gang activity than youth from all other racial backgrounds, the majority of gang members in Toronto are Canadian-born whites; and 3) racial di erences in gang involvement can be explained by racial di erences in economic and social marginalization. # e policy implications of these fi ndings are discussed.

This paper explores police stop and search activities in Canada using data from a 2007 survey of Toronto residents. The paper begins by demonstrating that black respondents are more likely to view racial profiling as a major problem in Canada than whites or Asians. By contrast, white and Asian respondents are more likely to believe that profiling is a useful crime-fighting tool. Further analysis reveals that the black community's concern with racial profiling may be justified. Indeed, black respondents are much more likely to report being stopped and searched by the police over the past two years than respondents from other racial backgrounds. Blacks are also much more likely to report vicarious experiences with racial profiling. Importantly, racial differences in police stop and search experiences remain statistically significant after controlling for other relevant factors. The theoretical implications of these findings - and their meaning within Canada's multicultural framework - are discussed.

This research compares representations of rap music with the self-reported criminal behavior and resistant attitudes of the music's core audience. Our database is a large sample of Toronto high school students (n = 3,393) from which we identify a group of listeners, whose combination of musical likes and dislikes distinguish them as rap univores. We then examine the relationship between their cultural preference for rap music and involvement in a culture of crime and their perceptions of social injustice and inequity. We find that the rap univores, also known as urban music enthusiasts, report significantly more delinquent behavior and stronger feelings of inequity and injustice than listeners with other musical tastes. However, we also find that the nature and strengths of those relationships vary according to the racial identity of different groups within urban music enthusiasts. Black and white subgroups align themselves with resistance representations while Asians do not; whites and Asians report significant involvement in crime and delinquency, while blacks do not. Finally, we discuss our findings in light of research on media effects and audience reception, youth subcultures and post-subcultural analysis, and the sociology of cultural consumption.

This paper examines attitudes towards the criminal justice system among a large, diverse sample of residents from Toronto, Canada. The results indicate that while most residents positively evaluate the performance of the police and criminal courts, black and Chinese Canadians have less favorable views than whites. Compared to whites, racial minority respondents are also much more likely to perceive various forms of discrimination within the justice system. Perceptions of racial bias are particularly widespread among black respondents. Interestingly, these racial differences cannot be explained by immigration patterns. Indeed, regardless of race, attitudes towards the justice system are most positive among recent immigrants. However, attitudes become less favorable with time spent in Canada and are most negative among Canadian-born racial minorities. The paper concludes with a discussion of the theoretical and policy implications of these findings.

The "Myth" of Immigrant CriminalityIn 1994, following a highly publicized homicide involving a white female victim and a black male assailant, the Canadian media began to draw a direct connection between immigration and violent crime (Wortley 2003).One popular columnist, for example, wrote that "our culture is not used to this type of savagery" and that "this type of crime is the direct result of choosing too many of the wrong immigrants" (Blachford 1994: 3).Another reporter maintained that "White Canadians are understandably fed up with people they see as outsiders coming into their country and beating and killing them" (Maharaj 1994: 11).Of course, this type of mediadriven moral panic is not unique to Canada.Similar public pronouncements about the relationship between immigration and criminality have emerged throughout the histories of Europe, the United States, Australia, and other immigration-receiving regions (see Martinez 2008; Collins and Reid, this volume).Unfortunately, sensationalistic media coverage of crimes committed by immigrants and racial minorities appears to have had a strong impact on public opinion.Indeed, international research indicates that, in many Western nations, a high proportion of the general public believes that immigrants commit more crime than the native born (see Simon and Sikich 2007).Importantly, the belief or hypothesis that immigration causes crime is being severely challenged by recent scholarship.Renowned sociologist Robert Sampson (2006), for example, has argued that the drop in crime that began in the United States in the early 1990s can be partially explained by increases in immigration.Indeed, a growing number of studies have produced findings that suggest that