The mandate and activities of a specialized crime reduction policing unit in Canada

There has been a lexical shift in policing terminology from crime prevention' to crime reduction.' Still, the overarching goals continue to include addressing crime and disorder and providing public protection. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) has developed specialized crime reduction units (CRUs) as one strategy to achieve these objectives; however, there has been limited research on these units' mandates and crime reduction strategies in a Canadian policing context. This paper presents the findings of qualitative interviews and descriptive statistics collected from one RCMP CRU to examine how the Unit's officers articulated the specific tasks established in their mandate and whether their policing activities reflected the mandate's distinctive objectives. Results suggest that communication and human resource challenges led to officers' tentativeness in expressing their Unit's mandate and the teams' restricted use of analytical tools, respectively. This research has implications for policing agencies seeking to develop specialized CRUs.