Breaching the Public Trust and Sentencing Canadian Police Officers: Addressing Rotten Apples, but not Rotten Barrels or Orchards

Abstract

When a police officer commits a criminal offense, they not only violate the very laws they are legally entrusted to uphold, but in doing so, they also violate the public’s trust. In Canada, the importance of public trust is recognized through the criminal offense of “breach of trust by a public officer,” and as an aggravating factor in sentencing. As there is a significant dearth of research on police criminality and on the sentencing of police officers in Canada, we present an empirically grounded examination of 93 sentencing decisions between 1990 and 2024, involving over 100 police officers convicted for breaches of trust. The study sheds light on the nature of police-perpetrated breaches of trust, and on the ways in which courts sentence police-offenders in Canada. Our study underscores that although sentencing is an important element of police accountability, it does little to address the systemic aspects of police criminality.