Abstract

Broken communities are marked by a familiar litany of abuses, including fraud, vandalism, violence, substance abuse, and apathy. In such communities, the protective agencies designed to prevent abuse fail utterly to fix what is broken. No one in the helping professions is really shocked by, or cares about what happens in a community already broken. When a particularly egregious event occurs, the governing agencies commission a report, which then urges better communication, new procedures, and ever more regulations. But nothing works, and nothing changes. The regulatory system, too, is broken. We believe that there are broken organizations, unfortunately resembling these tragically broken communities. We believe that the systems in place, designed to mend them or fix them, or limit the harm done, are broken too. In our presentation, we will analyse one example of a broken organization. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in Canada, once the stuff of Hollywood legend, has been plagued by scandals, cover-ups, violence, and accusations of fraud and corruption. We end with an examination of the pro-active front-end solutions to the risks and vulnerabilities of such organizations, and yet still seriously consider whether anything can work to mend these broken organizations.