Safer, Meaner Streets

Like the author of Canadian Policing in the 21st Century: A Frontline Officer on Challenges and Changes, I have been involved with the criminal justice system for most of my adult life. Unlike Robert Chrismas, however, I have not endured the pressures and stresses of front-line police work, balancing the desire to arrest those who impose harm with the need to simultaneously respect their human rights. I have not seen murderers and the distributors of illegal drugs at their worst, but rather, more often, at their best, able to reflect upon what they have done, years after the crimes in question. I have spent almost 40 years studying law and criminology at something of a distance from the most awful of events, nestled in the comfortable perch of a university on top of a mountain.

These differences in perspective necessarily create different frames of observation with respect to...