BLOG.

About Mistakes ...

Usually, when the topic of research ethics is taught in university classes, we focus on extreme cases like Zimbardo's prison experiment*...

Writing for Cash (aka ‘grant writing’)

Being currently stuck into academic grant reviewing season, and having just submitted two research grants for provincial funding myself...

Trust: What Does The Research Say?

I was recently in the unenviable situation of having to advise someone that, no, I wouldn’t simply accept an other's judgment when it...

The First 48: Tracking Down a Potentially Made-up Number

A few years ago, I was co-presenting on evidence based policing at the CAPE (Canadian Association of Police Educators) conference, when...

MissPers: What's new in (some) Canadian research?

A while back I undertook a monster review of the missing persons research in Canada as part of an exercise for the Independent Review...

Emotional Labour, An Under-researched Aspect of Police Work

This past week I've been doing a deep-dive into missing persons data and I cannot lie: it's depressing as hell. Every single case -...

Old Wine in New Bottles (or 'ho hum Public Health')

I hate to break it to you, but ... the promotion of the new approach to violence which sees crime as the result series of social risk...

Into Research? Most of You are Going to the Wrong Conferences

I've just returned from the American Society of Criminology (ASC) conference in San Fran, where I had an epiphany. What was it, you ask?...

Yes, Crime is 'Difficult', but it's Not So 'Different'

One of the arguments I’ve heard against the use of science in policing is that it’s a craft that requires practitioner expertise and...

GOBSAT (aka ‘best practices’)

If there was ever a buzz-term that was likely to trigger the hell out of me, it’s got to be ‘best practices.’ Why, you ask? Well, because...