The Unsustainable Costs of the Public Police

• Author: Kent Roach
• Pages: 99-112

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The Unsustainable Costs of the

Public Police

INTRODUCTION

In –, Canadians spent  per person on policing. Today, we spend

 person in constant dollars. Most of this money goes to salaries. e aver-

age police salary is about ,. In total, we spend . billion on the

public police.

e RCMP’s budget continues to grow. It spent . billion in –

and plans to spend . billion in –, including . billion in revenues

from charges to cities, provinces, and territories for contract policing. e

RCMP plans to add more than , new ocers by –.

e OPP’s budget in – was . billion — a  percent increase

since –. Despite this increase, the Ontario auditor general found that

there was a  percent cut to OPP ocers, a  percent decrease in patrol hours,

and understang in about half of the municipalities the OPP polices. In other

words, the auditor general raised concerns about whether taxpayers and those

who pay for the OPP to police their localities are getting value for money.

Police budgets are only a partial measure of the costs of policing. Police

are the gatekeepers to our expensive criminal justice system and to jails. e

Parliamentary Budget Oce has estimated that in –, it cost  a day

per person to imprison people.

Concerns about the costs of the police are nothing new and they cross

partisan lines. In , then Conservative minister of public safety Vic Toews

warned police leaders: “Police services face two options — they can do nothing

and eventually be forced to cut drastically, as we have seen in some countries;

or they can be proactive, get ahead of the curve, and have greater exibility