"CPAC will act as a catalyst for the development and delivery of community policing in Ontario through linkages and partnerships with policing, community groups and agencies throughout the Province of Ontario."
Over the course of Winter 2008/2009, the Community Policing Committee of the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police collaborated with 50 police officers and citizens from across Ontario in advising a new Ontario Model of Community Policing.
This project has been lead by our own Dr.Hugh Russell and CPAC has been asked to help roll out the new model on our website. The model is very close to completion and we will post it as soon as it is available.
We are excited about this endeavor and look forward to sharing it with you in the near future.
Tories move to cut '2-for-1' jail credit
By Greg Joyce, THE CANADIAN PRESS March 27, 2009
SURREY, B.C. - Flanked by politicians and senior police officers who have been besieged by a recent wave of gun violence in British Columbia, federal Justice Minister Rob Nicholson made a tough-on-crime announcement Friday designed to keep criminals behind bars longer.
Legislation introduced by the Conservative government would result in criminals staying longer in prison by wiping out the current two-for-one sentencing credit given to those who spend time in jail before conviction.
Nicholson, who made the announcement outside the pretrial centre in Surrey, B.C., was joined by B.C.'s attorney general and solicitor general and senior police officers from Metro Vancouver, who have been trying to calm public fears after more than 40 shootings and 17 fatalities since late January.
And he suggested more tough-on-crime measures are in the offing from the federal government.
Nicholson said the minority Conservative government has tried in the past to toughen criminal laws, to no avail.
"I don't want to get to the situation we were in 2007 when we had about half a dozen pieces of legislation and absolutely nothing got passed," the minister said, referring to a parliamentary legislation bottleneck.
CPAC is represented on the Ontario Association of Chiefs ofPolice (OACP) Community Policing Committee. Through that Committee CPAC has undertaken an exciting project to update and revise the Community Policing Model that Ontario adopted back in 1996.
The old model has proved inadequate for a number of reasons:
1) the language, concepts and meanings are vague and general;
2) it does not speak to front line police officers to whom falls most of the community policing work;
3) it does not accommodate recent trends in community policing,like “community mobilization”; and,
4) it inadvertently suggests that police officers are responsible for things like “community development”
Back in 2005, CPAC decided that communities in Ontario had enough experience with community policing projects and initiatives that it was time for someone to go find out what works, and what doesn’t.
So CPAC asked a group of people (police leaders, agency directors, community activists,government experts, and others), “Putting your life of experience together, what factors do you think are most critical for the success of a local, community-police partnership?”*
That started a project to research factors that are critical to the success of any community policing or community mobilization project, anywhere. CPAC’s interviews with experts
generated a list of approximately 50 potential “critical success factors” on which the balance of the work will concentrate. These critical success factors cluster under five headings:
Ontario is supporting a new justice initiative that will help to
strengthen First Nations, Métis and Inuit communities in Ottawa.
As part of a funding partnership with the federal government,
Ontario will provide $57,500 in annual funding to the Odawa Native
Friendship Centre to develop and implement a new Aboriginal Community
Justice Program.
Under the new program, Aboriginal adults and youth in the criminal
justice system will have access to pre- and post-charge direct
accountability programs. Direct accountability programs require
offenders to make direct amends to their victims and the community, as
well as receive cultural and healing supports that help to reduce the
risk of re-offending.
"CPAC will act as a catalyst for the development and delivery of community policing in Ontario through linkages and partnerships with policing, community groups and agencies throughout the Province of Ontario."
