"I want them to know that I'm a person too": Understanding Youth Perspectives on Interactions with Police

• Author / Creator

  Pynoo, Emily M

• Ongoing cases of police brutality and violence, including those with fatal consequences, have sparked global calls for police reform. In particular, police killings of unarmed racialized individuals and individuals experiencing mental health crises, have fuelled widespread questions regarding police training, competency, necessity, and role. These questions remain largely unanswered, as there is a lack of consensus among the public and interested parties regarding the nature of changes needed within police systems. Despite this lack of consensus, there is increasing evidence that young people are disproportionately impacted by police brutality and its subsequent consequences, including the compounding effects on mental health concerns and preexisting structural inequities. Although some police systems have begun attempting to address these concerns and have often consulted a range of interested parties in doing so, there is typically one notable group missing: youth.
  Despite the introduction of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and the increasing involvement of young people in activism, there is still a persistent lack of formal opportunities for young people to be meaningfully and effectively involved in decision-making and policy development. In particular, there is limited evidence relevant to how police systems serve youth, with many youth-focused policing initiatives lacking a foundation in evidence-based practice. Furthermore, although some police systems have begun integrating youth-specific strategies and policies, and even training youth-specific officers, few police systems have consulted youth in doing so. Given the right of young people to be involved in decision-making that directly impacts them, I felt it was necessary to develop a study that could address both of these aforementioned gaps. Specifically, I aimed to add to the evidence base of youth-specific policing practices, and most importantly, to ensure that youths’ voices and experiences are heard and integrated in doing so.
  To meet this goal, I developed a hybridized research approach by combining principles of the Critical Incident Technique and Participatory Action Research. I partnered with a community-based not-for-profit organization that supports young people facing barriers and conducted individual interviews and a focus group with youth who had experienced police interactions. Youth discussed significant encounters they had with police in the past to contextualize ‘critical incidents,’ or factors they believed to have contributed to the outcomes of these encounters. The critical incidents included actions that both youth and police had taken that youth perceived to either help or hinder the encounter, as well as wish-list items, or those that youth wish would have been different. Youth also discussed their perspectives on how previous interactions with police had impacted their current level of criminal-legal involvement and their overall well-being. Following these individual conversations, a focus group was held in which youth discussed their overall perspectives on youth policing and police system evolution. Two young people expressed interest in the participatory components of the research and thus acted as co-researchers in developing the coding framework and analyzing the focus group data to present it in their own words. In doing so, the principles of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, along with the theoretical underpinnings of the current study, could be upheld to ensure youths’ perspectives relevant to issues that directly impact them can be heard.
  Youth provided numerous actionable suggestions relevant to youth-policing practices and police system evolution. The findings are then discussed within the context of other proposed improvements to policing practices in the current literature. Additionally, this study is part of a broader, ongoing study with Dr. Melissa Tremblay, in which community partners and police officers who work with youth will also be interviewed, and a scoping review of police practices relevant to working with youth will be included. Much of the existing literature has addressed one portion of these study components in a silo, making it difficult to integrate findings from relevant interested and impacted parties with existing research and practice. By completing these studies in tandem, we aim to address this issue by combining all findings and providing police systems with actionable recommendations informed by both evidence and practice.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Youth
  • Police
  • Police reform
  • Critical Incident Technique
  • Participatory Action Research

• Graduation date

  Fall 2024

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Doctor of Philosophy

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-prkz-m575

• License

  This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Library with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.