Universities as Sanctimoniously Progressive Institutes of Lower Learning

"[Police and prison intuitions are] hostile to outside critiques, [show] imperviousness to reforms [and] do not have the leadership capacity to engage in the transformative change."                                                                                 "Even in the context of widespread public scrutiny and claims to be reforming, Canadian police are on pace to kill a record number of people in 2020, many of whom are racialized, Indigenous, and/or suffering mental health challenges."    "The Black Lives Matter movement and Indigenous organizers in Canada provides an opportunity to move beyond episodic discussions of structural racism and enact tangible actions, particularly in regards to criminal justice systems in Canada." Institute of Criminology and Criminal Justice Department, Carleton University, Ottawa

"I would expect that kind of move by a political organization but from something that claims to train students in research, it is not exactly a good message to send."  "In research, the ideal position is that you're neutral and you're trying to understand a given issue."                                                                                                             "You don't have to agree with everything an organization you are going to study is doing."                                                                                                                               Remi Boivin, director, International Centre for Comparative Criminology, Universite de Montreal

"The RCMP believes that bringing students from the program into the organization is of great benefit, especially during a time of transformative organizational change."                                                                                                              "These students bring fresh and innovative ways of thinking and an academic lens to the organization that supports our organizational response to complex and emerging policing issues."                                                                                   "[This decision makes us sad]. The RCMP values the students and relationships we have built with the Carleton University Criminology Department over the past ten years."                                                                                                                Cpl.Caroline Duval, national spokeswoman, RCMP

Some 80 third-year students from Carleton University's Institute of Criminology and Criminal Justice take part in internships with the Ottawa Police Service, RCMP, Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre and other institutions each year. That will end in 2021. (Francis Ferland/CBC)

Universities, academic institutions of higher learning, where students are ushered toward the opening of minds, to approach situations with a questing, questioning motivation to learn and to observe and to participate and ultimately to emerge from the experience capable of understanding the world around them, taking their place in a chosen profession with pride. That, at least, is the original purpose of a university, to teach students to appraise, and to analyze, to withhold judgement until an issue can be seen in the round, then to approach the situation with firm conviction and the certainty of what they can personally do with their newfound knowledge to improve it.

At Carleton University in Ottawa henceforth, students in the criminology department will no longer be given the advantage of an inside look at how policing agencies, prisons and other associated public security institutions operate. Students who, having obtained their degree and looking to the future of the professional life they have chosen as a police officer, inmate records co-ordinator, correctional officer, detention officer, guard, correctional rehabilitation officer, juvenile detention counsellor, bailiff, undercover investigator, parole officer, will no longer have the advantage of prior experience gained through student placement to prepare them for their professional lives.

Because the department that is grooming them for their choice of profession, and the professors who teach in that department have decided on the wisdom of cancelling the opportunity, claiming that police at municipal, provincial and federal levels and prisons are too steeped in racism and brutality to become a mentoring agent to students. The 'white-privilege, colonialist' mindset that is the mantra of Black Lives Matter has thoroughly penetrated the halls of academia. Not, thankfully, all such academic institutions, but most markedly on this occasion, Ottawa's Carleton University, with doubtless more to follow, while still others refrain.

Denying students the exposure and experience at correctional institutes and law enforcement agencies that would greatly assist them in fully comprehending details and circumstances not available to them in a classroom, in preparing them for their professional lives. The university and its staff have decided in their great wisdom that depriving students of such resources normally included in their preparation for real life outside academia, would sully their reputations and pride in themselves. An dismissive indictment of the agencies instead, is a salve to their progressive credentials.

Over the several decades of the criminology program, thousands of students at Carleton had the benefit of field placements with the RCMP, Ottawa Police Service, Correctional Services Canada and the Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre, but the latest wave of international protests over racism implicating policing has spurred a wide re-assessment. One of the largest such programs in Canada, the School of Criminology at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, B.C. itself cancelled its student placements, but its reason was COVID-19-related.

Carleton University Ottawa.  Adrian Wyld / THE CANADIAN PRESS

"I did an ICCJ placement at [Correctional Service of Canada], evaluating efforts to strengthen offender-staff relations." "I now do community-based work diverting youth from courts, partnering with universities on evaluation. Institutions are improved when partnered with universities. This [Carleton University's suspension of student placements] is a bad idea."  Alex Yeaman, former Carleton student