Patricia Allen Memorial Lecture: Addressing Police Violence against Women in Canada

With Prof. Sylvia Rich, University of Ottawa Faculty of Law (McGill LLB/BCL ’07)

Police violence against women may occur when police are carrying out their duties, or it may occur outside of the scope of their official duties. Reports of both kinds of violence have been increasing in Canadian media over the last ten years in relation to the RCMP and the Sûreté Québec, among others. Culture change is always difficult and policing culture is a strong and intransigent cultural force. On the other hand, simply accepting the status quo of police committing acts of violence against the vulnerable people they are meant to protect is intolerable. This lecture will present some of these cases of widespread police violence against women and lay out different options the law has for addressing them.

Bio

Prof. Sylvia Rich is an assistant professor at the University of Ottawa. She has a D.Phil. from the University of Oxford, where her work was supported by the Fonds de recherche Québec: société et culture. She completed her law degree at McGill University and, in 2007-2008, clerked for the Hon. Justice Ian Binnie at the Supreme Court of Canada. Prof. Rich has also worked in the federal public service, as a researcher for the Sentencing Council for England and Wales, and as an associate in business litigation in New York. Her  academic articles have appeared in Jurisprudence, Criminal Law and Philosophy, the Canadian Journal of Law and Society and the Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence. Prof. Rich’s current research interests include criminal law theory, corporate malfeasance, police violence, philosophy of law, critical legal theory and sentencing.