Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police

In this document, prepared by the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police (CACP) with funding from Human Resources and Skills Development Canada (HRSDC), police officers reflect on the impact of low literacy among the people they deal with.

The officers share their concern that some people don’t understand what is going on in the court system and discuss telltale signs that low literacy is a problem for someone.

This video focuses on an initiative of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police (CACP), aimed at making police aware of how low literacy may affect the people they deal with.

More than 23,000 Canadian adults took part in an International Adult Literacy and Skills Survey in 2003. This survey defined literacy as “the ability to use and understand information that is fundamental to daily life at work, at home, and in the community.” Statistics Canada and Human Resources Development Canada have adopted this definition.

This resource manual is a publication by the Literacy and Policing Project of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police (CACP), Ottawa, and its Crime Prevention Committee. It provides an overview of the literacy problem in Canada, the impact of low literacy on communities, crime and the justice system and how to recognize the signals of low literacy and act on them. The legalities relating to literacy are also described.