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Research Projects

Communities Project

Background

Increasingly social relationships are being organised around and through communities. Governments, for example, are turning to communities for the solutions to many social issues. Communities have become the site not only in which official policies and programs are implemented, but more and more communities are being called upon to develop and administer policies themselves. Community policing, community health care and community economic development are some examples of the types of partnerships into which governments and communities are entering.

As policy makers are turning to communities to assume a greater responsibility for governance, customary notions of what constitutes a community are being called into question. Canadian society is increasingly being divided along the lines of age, race, gender, nationality, culture, sexual preference, interests and religion. There is a growing sense that communities are becoming more fragmented, and within communities social relationships are becoming more diffuse. Moreover, individuals are likely to be active in multiple, over-lapping and competing communities that reflect the shifting social, political and cultural boundaries that help determine group membership. These communities may be constituted by local relationships and grounded in local concerns, or they may be composed of individuals dispersed around the globe. Paradoxically, while the idea of community has become more central to policy debates, the sociological reality of community has become more ambiguous.

Under its social relationships theme, the Commission is embarking on a major research project that will explore the relationship between law and communities. How can law - both informal and formal - be used to support vibrant communities and help rebuild fragile communities? How can law inspire people to build communities founded on principles of justice?

The Commission will undertake several research projects that will address the following two sets of questions:

• How and why does the law fix some and undermine or erase other notions of community? Why is it that the law recognises, supports and nurtures some communities and not others?

• What are the implications when there is a variance between communities as social facts and communities as recognised by the law? How does this variance stimulate or block legal reform and innovation?

Communities Project - Conceptual Issues

Communities are complex social phenomena. Most Canadians have an intuitive understanding of what communities are - the neighbourhoods we live in, the network of associations and friendships we develop over time, the people we work with, or the people with whom we worship. Yet on closer inspection communities are multidimensional, their boundaries are flexible and over-lapping, and, depending on one's point of reference, communities can be democratic or repressive, dynamic or stultifying, enriching or constricting.

Given the complexity of communities, policy statements must go beyond simply professing to support vibrant communities. The challenge is to first recognise both the positive and negative aspects of community, then develop policies and practices that maximise those aspects of community life that advance freedom and dignity and minimise those that hinder this.

The Commission issued a Request for Proposal for research to delineate the features or key indicators of vibrant, healthy communities. The following questions will help guide this research:

• What are some key indicators of `community'?
• What factors make a community healthy or vibrant?
• What role does the law play in facilitating or restricting, encouraging or repressing these features?

Communities Project - Order and Security

The emerging relationships between public and private police appears to contradict a fundamental principle of modern nation states: that modern states govern through the exercise of authority, backed up by their capacity to exert a monopoly on legitimate coercion. With the blurring of the boundary between public and private policing this principle is now less certain today. Increasingly, the maintenance of order and the provision of security has become a mixed public and private responsibility.

The Law Commission of Canada issued a Request for Proposal to examine the implication of the emerging relationship between public and private police is having at the level of communities. By communities, the Commission refers to groups of individuals who, viewed subjectively or objectively, have something significant in common (for example, geographic neighbourhoods or business improvement districts; complex organisations such as universities, shopping centres, recreation complexes and corporations; residential communities such as housing co-operatives, condominiums, or gated communities; and, communities of interest such as professional organisations, political organisations or recreational groups).

Among the types of research concerns the Commission would like to see addressed are the following:

• What are the implications for the blurred relationship between public and private police in terms of the order and security interests of various types of communities? Are some communities better able to have their order and security interests realised than others?
• What happens when different types of communities gain control over their policing services? Do policing services become more democratic? Are the interests of minorities still represented? Do principles of justice shift according to the type of community control that is achieved?
• Have some communities been more successful than others in establishing a mix of public and private security? What happens when some types of policing services unavailable to certain communities?
• What happens when there is a clash of policing services within a community?

Communities Project - Public Participation in the Justice System

Traditionally, the jury was the primary method of involving the community in the justice system. Restorative justice programs suggest a departure from this traditional way of incorporating the community. The two differ in at least two significant ways. First, juries are supposed to be impartial. Impartiality is a cornerstone of the Canadian justice system. Juries operate under the assumption that individuals with nothing to lose and nothing to gain from the outcome of the case will make a reasoned decision. Unlike juries, community representatives in restorative justice programs are not impartial. The families of the victim and offender, the people who live in the area, the people who know the conflicting parties, and the people who have a vested interest in the outcome of the case participate directly in the proceedings.

Community representatives also play a different role than jurors. For the most part, jurors are passive during the court process. Their role does not extend beyond listening to the evidence. A juror's only chance to discuss the evidence comes during the deliberation phase. Community representatives in some restorative justice programs play a more active role. They listen to the victim and offender's story but they also ask questions and share their concerns. Moreover, they participate in negotiations between the parties to arrive at a resolution to the conflict that is just for all. Far from being detached observers of the process, many restorative justice encounters between victims, offenders and community members are highly emotional.

Restorative justice advocates suggest that this expanded role for communities is empowering. It allows communities to actively participate in decisions that have a direct bearing on their lives. The expanded role of communities does, however, suggest a shift away from a formal, detached and rational style of decision-making to a style of decision-making that is much more informal, involved and emotional.

The Law Commission issued a Request for Proposal for research to examine the following questions:

• To what extent is the jury system an effective method of ensuring meaningful community involvement in the criminal justice system? How does this compare with how the community is involved in a restorative justice program?
• What can be learned from existing research on juries that could be applied to improve the quality of community participation in restorative justice programs?