The impacts of police street checks on the community will be investigated by researchers at the University of Saskatchewan.

Assistant professor of sociology, Dr. Scott Thompson, says the study will take place over five years to look into the use of street checks by prairie police services’.  He says the study investigates the act of police carding and how it impacts the community.  It will also work directly with community members and the hard data from street checks, as a means to allow the community to speak back to police services on how street checks fit or do not fit their sense of justice.

Thompson says, during the study, data will be gathered through a series of access information requests, and the documents will be reviewed with community members to determine areas of interest, problematic encounters, or good practices that can be seen through the street check interactions that were done with the public.  Thompson explains the results will inform police leaders and boards, municipal leaders and the community. This will include a public facing report and a web portal with the data produced.

Ten years of data from municipal police services in Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Alberta will be analyzed to target problems like over representation of ethnic groups to biases in police data compiling technology.  The study will also include work with youth in the community regarding their experiences with street checks and analysis from the College of Law regarding the legality, based on court precedents.

The project is one of nine USask projects that researchers have been awarded $1.6 million in federal funding (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada) to address critical societal issues.