Similarities Between Millar And Owusu Bempah

Although race is an important factor of Canadian law, there is limited data on its connection with the criminal justice system. Millar and Owusu-Bempah will reveal how the police suppresses data on the race of victims and offenders, which makes it more difficult to conduct anti-racism research and easier for police to implement racial profiling (2011). Also, the authors will argue that intelligence collection conducted by powerful institutions such as police, serves to their advantage rather than the public’s, due its confidentiality. Hence, the authors will explore the race data available and unavailable, but required.

Millar and Owusu-Bempah draw on how contemporary studies reveal the disproportionate racial populations in Canadian incarceration,

One of these being the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Survey, which is filled out by most police departments and divisions. Yet, this survey only records information about the crime, and nothing about race. Another police record is the Uniform Crime Reporting Incident-based Survey (UCR-2). Similar to the UCR, this survey also records information on the crime and the parties involved in committing the offence. In addition, the UCR-2 records social characteristics of victims, age and gender, relationship between the offender and victim, and date of birth. In terms of race, the UCR-2 only accounts for Aboriginal status. Thus, both the UCR and UCR-2 are limited in racial data. An important point made by Millar and Owusu-Bempah is that based on the data they analysed that was obtained via freedom of information request, recording racial data has been on the decline in recent years (2011). Specifically, Canadian police are not only recording less data on Aboriginal status, but race overall. According to the authors, some explanations by the police include race not being a significant factor in legal matters, or the more biased reason being that it is simply not of the police’s interest because revealing such information would work against them, by revealing discriminatory police discretion and practices. This goes back to how there is an underlying presence of racism in the Canadian criminal justice and law enforcements. Ultimately, this is why the authors are advocating for anti-racism research, which can be conducted effectively with the appropriate data available on