Criminology Commons^™

Exit Through The Giftshop: Claims-Making And The Construction Of A Countercultural Brand, Cecil Mcglynn

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Independent, online microcelebrity influencers are increasingly many people’s source of news. A popular group of these influencers, called the Alternative Influence Network (AIN) has come under scrutiny in recent years for collaborating with radical, far-right political actors to advance particular viewpoints (Lewis, 2018). While those within the AIN claim these outputs represent their freedom of speech, some researchers have voiced concern around the possibility of these influencers proliferating or even popularizing radical political ideals. Steven Crowder is among the most popular influencers in the AIN. He performs a daily show, ‘Louder with Crowder’, to his 5.8 million YouTube subscribers. In …

Mainstream Media Portrayal Of Banishment And Nation-Imposed Punishment, Keely Ormond

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

“In a traditional village, we wouldn’t have a teepee with no door on it and throw somebody in there. We wouldn’t cast them out, because banishment meant death. What we had to do was restore relationships” – Ryan Beardy (Thorpe, 2022).

The following project examines the representation of Indigenous traditions, customs, and issues in Canadian mainstream media. Specifically, this project is interested in the portrayal of banishment as an Indigenous practice in Canadian mainstream news outlets. This project is based on an interpretive paradigm informed by grounded theory and concepts of media framing, postcolonialism, settler colonialism and restorative justice. Nineteen …

Empathy In Police Officers Undergoing De-Escalation Simulation Training: A Comparison Between Virtual Reality And Live Action Modalities, Jacqueline Kohl

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This study compared empathy among police officers undergoing mental health crisis de-escalation training in virtual reality and live action training modalities. The study included police officers across different police services in Ontario (N=63) and evaluated the efficacy of the Mental Health Crisis Response Training (MHCRT, Lavoie et al., 2020) program delivered across virtual reality and live action modalities against a control group that did not receive the training program. After collection of participants’ demographics, empathy scores, and de-escalation competency scores, a series of correlations, ANOVAs and ANCOVAs were conducted. Results showed that participants receiving MHCRT virtual reality and …

Paper Gangsters: White Collar And Corporate Crime On Film, Jacob Kavoukis

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Many of us have never been victims of a serious crime and as a result, rely on the media in its various forms to provide us with information that we can rely on as being accurate in order to learn about it. Information on white-collar crime in the media differs from more common street crime in that it receives very little attention. The lack of attention could be because these crimes are considered non-violent and victimless, are committed by those of high social stature and power and are often complex and challenging to understand. Films can play an important role …

Fifth-Dimensional Warfare And National Security In Canada: Situating Microdeviation Theory Within C-59: An Act Respecting National Security Matters, Hayden Slight

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

In an era of rapid technological change, the growing threat environment in the cyber dimension will continue to influence how a sovereign nation contends with attacks that can occur from any corner of the world. The growing adaptation and expansion of technology belonging to the Internet of Things (IoT) and the increasing prevalence of social media (Facebook, Twitter) has also influenced the spreading of attack surfaces that can become victim to exploitation by motivated parties including foreign states and terrorist groups. Against this backdrop, Canada’s own efforts to modernize and reinforce its own national security agencies resulted in the developing …

An Analysis Of Collective Efficacy As A Predictor Of Gun Violence In Toronto, Carly Richards

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

There has been a 42% increase in gun violence in Canada since 2013, largely due to increases in Toronto (Statistics Canada, 2022a). To gain a better understanding of this phenomenon, this study evaluated collective efficacy as a predictor of gun violence. Seven correlates of collective efficacy were identified including, low economic status, ethnic diversity, mobility, family disruption, employment rate, low educational attainment, and youth percentage in a population. This study included data from the City of Toronto’s Open Data Portal and the 2016 Canadian Census. The data were pulled from various datasets and then were reorganized into one file, which …

Parental Incarceration And Stigma: A Qualitative Content Analysis Of Children's Books, Samantha Nguyen

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Children of parental incarceration are often forgotten victims and have been noted to experience collateral consequences such as stigma, poor mental health, and isolation. Since children are often forgotten, there is a lack of information regarding their experiences, what resources are available to them, and whether or not these resources intended to be beneficial. One of the resources that are available to children, caregivers, and other adults are children’s books regarding parental incarceration. To determine whether or not these children's books act as a guide, this study examined the content and illustrations of 19 children’s books on parental incarceration. The …

Loose Coupling, Burden Shuffling, And Pervasive Penality: The Role Of Bylaw Enforcement In Managing Homelessness, Natasha Martino

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

In Canada, over 235,000 people experience homelessness per year. The COVID-19 pandemic has increased the visibility of homelessness and the use of homeless encampments across Ontario. As visibility has increased, so too have community members’ expectations to manage homelessness or find a solution to minimize the visibility of homelessness. While there has been some scholarship about the police management of homelessness, far less is known about the role of bylaw enforcement. Yet, bylaw officers play a critical role in responding to homelessness due to their increasing responsibility for enforcing municipal bylaws and COVID-19 public health mandates, such as stay at …

What Is Canada Doing? An Analysis Of Canadian University Sexual Violence Policies, Konnor Legault

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

As social awareness of the prevalence of sexual violence on university campuses has increased, it is important to understand the role of university policies in providing protection and support for the campus community and people affected by sexual violence. The purpose of this research is to analyze and compare Sexual Violence Policies (SVP) from four Canadian universities. The analysis evaluates the comprehensiveness of the policies and considers how power, and ideas of power are embedded within SVPs. Findings suggest that policies are at times comprehensive, but may be missing important information, such as including an Objectives section in the policies. …

Body-Worn Cameras And Organizational Stress In Canadian Policing: A Qualitative Study, Chelsea Doiron

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Body-worn camera (BWC) technology has gained traction in North American police services as a tool to enhance police transparency and accountability. To date, the research available on BWCs has focused on the impact BWCs have on police services, investigations, officer and citizen behaviour, and, police officers’ and community members’ attitudes towards BWCs (Lum et al., 2019). The vast majority of this existing research has been quantitative in nature and has been conducted in the United States, where police practices and policies differ from those in Canada. While there have been a number of pilot projects and research evaluations conducted on …

Policing And Fatherhood Identities: A Gendered Analysis Of The Work And Home Experiences Of Police Fathers Before And During Covid-19, Danielle Thompson

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Policing scholars have long pointed to police culture as an explanation for the negative behaviour of officers (Chan 1996), yet police culture also plays a crucial role in informing how officers make sense of their experiences both inside and outside of the organization. Much of the research on gendered experiences of police culture have focused on the experiences of women police, yet little attention has been given to the experiences of male officers in macho police culture. Moreover, there is a paucity of literature that has focused specifically on how police who are fathers perceive their own experiences, either at …

A Qualitative Exploration Into The Subjective Experiences Of Healthcare Serial Killers, Florence Tang

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The prototypical serial killer is widely perceived as extremely violent offender who murders out of sexual gratification (Hodgkinson et al., 2017). The perception of serial killers primarily being sexual sadists may be greatly affected by an overfocus of research on sexually violent serial killers and a lack of attention on their non-sexually motivated counterparts such as healthcare serial killers (HCSK) (Lubaszka et al., 2014). In addition, a lack of qualitative inquiry into the experiences of serial homicide may be an impediment to understanding the deeper psychological reasons of why serial killers commit homicide (Kerr & Beech, 2016; Skrapec, 2001a). The …

Risk Factors Related To School Shootings, Best Anaele

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

School shootings have become a major issue in the United States for over the past 20 years, contributing to the resurgence of the debates surrounding gun control policies. However, further research is needed to better understand the risk factors of school shootings. The FBI constructed the Four-Pronged Threat Assessment Model, a risk assessment specifically applied to school shooters (O’Toole, n.d). Within the current study, the Four-Pronged Threat Assessment Model will be applied to five school shooters: Eric Harris, Dylan Klebold (both Columbine school shooters), Seung Heung Cho (the Virginia Tech School Shooter), Adam Lanza (the Sandy Hook School Shooter), and …

“The Police Don’T Do Anything. Even When They Get Told About These Creeps”: An Exploration Of How Vigilantes Attempt To Gain Legitimacy As Leaders Of Status Degradation Ceremonies, Hannah Eggett

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Status degradation ceremonies are a process through which a denouncer(s) and members of a community shift an individual’s status within their social group to a lower position (Garfinkel, 1956). Current status degradation ceremony literature primarily focuses on ceremonies that are carried out by formal officials as well as the impacts of these ceremonies on the denounced individuals. This research provides insights into ceremonies led by “pseudo-officials,” individuals or groups who hold no formally recognised position but claim to act in the public interest in the same manner as formally appointed officials are expected to. This exploratory case study focuses on …

A Threat Assessment Of Radicalized Extremist Right-Wing White Nationalist Subcultures In Canada: A Social Media Analysis, Dylon Groom

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

As literature and media findings suggest, right-wing extremism has been a growing threat to the security of Canada. This qualitative research study seeks to develop a better understanding of the way Canadian right-wing white nationalists develop online in order to aid future radicalization research. After the tragic attacks on September 11^th, 2001, radicalization research has largely been focused on Islamist extremism. By utilizing a conventional content analysis approach to the open-sourced white nationalist discussion forum, stormfront.org, this thesis bridges the gap between the understanding of Islamist extremism and right-wing white nationalists. Ten Canadian white nationalists active on the …

Through The Lurking Glass: A Qualitative Media Analysis Of Traditional Gender Norms And Stalking Depictions In Film, Alexandra Baril

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This thesis examines to what extent traditional gender norms are adhered to by the depiction of stalkers within films. Stalking has only recently been recognized as a social problem. Due to the relatively new attention, there has been a lack of research surrounding the way in which stalkers and stalking behaviours are being portrayed within popular media, particularly film media. This paper uses a qualitative ethnographic content analysis approach to examine these stalking depictions. Twenty films that had a high level of stalking portrayed behaviours, and thriller genres rather than horror genres, were collected and analyzed. It was found that …

Constructions Of Sympathy: A Media Discourse Analysis Of Detained Children And Youth In Canada, Lauren Ashby

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Over the last few years, there has been an abundance of media articles published on irregular migrants (Msefer, 2017). While there is much research attention on media discourse on individual adult asylum seekers and refugee claimants, there is little research attention on how media portrays detained children and youth affected by immigration detention. A deductive content analysis of 35 Canadian newspaper articles published between January 1, 2013 and December 31, 2019 was conducted to explore the media discourse of youth held in immigration detention. Social construction of social problems (SCSP, Best, 2017) theory focuses on the way people create an …

Victimized And Criminalized Black Women’S Experiences With The Police In The Context Of Intimate Partner Violence, Patrina Duhaney

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This qualitative, multi-manuscript dissertation examines the experiences of Black women who live in the Greater Toronto Area and other southwestern Ontario regions who have experienced intimate partner violence (IPV), some of whom were also charged with an IPV-related offence. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 25 Black women to better understand the meanings they attach to their experiences. Critical race feminism (CRF) was employed to help conceptualize women’s narratives. In addition, the dissertation includes a review of the relevant literature, the methodology that was utilized for the study followed by three self-contained manuscripts. The purpose of the first manuscript is to …

The Geography Of Crime: Placing Geographers In The Space Of Criminologists, Anthony Wv Piscitelli

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The Geography of Crime consists of five articles. The first article, Exploring opportunities for geographers to explain the spatial distribution of crime, serves as a key conceptual link between each of the other four articles. This paper provides a broad introduction to the dissertation showing what gaps in the crime literature exist, especially those ripe for analysis by geographers. Three primary directions emerged as a focus of this dissertation: overarching theoretical contributions, specialized geographic quantitative techniques, and qualitative approaches centred on the concept of place.

The second article, Connecting social disorganization theory to broken windows and routine activities proposes …

Exploring Case Variables Predictive Of Histories Of Mental Illness In Incidents Of Police-Involved Firearm Fatalities In Canada, Michael Ouellet

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The tragedy of police-involved fatalities resulting in the death of individuals with serious mental illness has been brought to the forefront by recent high-profile incidents that have galvanized public concern and criticism that law enforcement organizations must improve their response to people in psychiatric crisis. This thesis employed descriptive and hierarchical logistic regression analyses to understand cases of police-involved shooting fatalities in Canada between 2006 and 2015. More precisely, this research focused on determining whether particular variables predicted group membership between victims with and without a history of mental illness. The General Aggression Model (GAM; Allen, Anderson, & Bushman, 2018) …

Beneficial Mourning By Inmates Who Have Lost A Significant Person, James Bradley Shoemaker

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Incarceration is already replete with loss before someone of significance to an inmate dies. The prison environment challenges every aspect of grieving, and failing to effectively mourn pathologizes grief, reduces quality of living, and results in behaviours that cause recidivism. It is a poignant interaction between this researcher in his role as a chaplain and a particular inmate that provides the impetus for this study. This study begins with a qualitative meta-synthesis that examined 10 qualitative articles and dissertations published over the last 30 years to explore how some inmates manage to effectively grieve the loss of a significant person. …

Parents Who Kill: Media Constructions Of Male And Female Filicide Cases, Mary Mccluskey

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Often, mothers who murder their children are portrayed as “bad mothers”, as “the news media creates monsters out of [those] who transgress what is considered appropriate maternal behavior” (Goc, 2009, p. 42). This is especially important, as the media has created portrayals of females as murderers which are different from portrayals of males who murder their children. Previous research has addressed the association of motherhood in female offenders, however, there is a lack of research that compares the portrayals of females and males who murder their children, formally known as filicide. Using a social constructionist lens, this research analyzes filicide …

Police Use Of Twitter: 21st Century Community Policing, Nicole Coomber

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

With the advancement of social media platforms like Twitter increasingly being woven into the everyday activities of society members, police services, in an attempt to stay relevant and reflective, have begun adopting Twitter into their work initiatives. The present study examines the perceptions Canadian police officers regarding their use of Twitter as a community policing tool. Through semi-structured interviews with police officers and administrative staff operating official police Twitter accounts, and constructivist grounded theorizing, this research provides an in-depth examination of the perceptions of police officers who use Twitter as a part of community policing initiatives. Specifically, the study explores …

A Qualitative Analysis Of Online Self-Harm Support Forums: Examining Users’ Online Activities During Self-Harm Desistance Processes, Claudia Volpe

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Non- suicidal self-injury, commonly referred to as NSSI, is defined as the damage of one’s body tissue through the practices of, but not limited to, cutting, burning, branding, bone-breaking, biting, hair pulling and head banging (Adler & Adler, 2011), without suicidal intent (Lewis & Mehrabkhani, 2016). Self-harm literature has primarily focused on persistence processes and NSSI-related online interaction in the maintenance of pro self-harm ideology and practice. Alternatively, this research will provide insight into desistance processes of non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) and related online interactions by conducting a virtual ethnography (Hine, 2000) of open, online spaces, consistent with the symbolic interactionist …

Attending To The Needs Of Inuit Inmates In Canada: Exploring The Perceptions Of Correctional Officers And Nunavut Officials, Kosta H. Barka

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

On March 10, 2015, the Office of the Auditor General of Canada released a performance audit concluding that the Nunavut Department of Justice did not adequately plan for and operate facilities to house inmates and did not adequately manage inmates in compliance with key rehabilitation and reintegration requirements. Given the room for improvement and my prior experience working with Nunavut Corrections, I embarked on a qualitative research project that sought to interview inmates in Nunavut Corrections about their perceptions of rehabilitation programs offered in Makigiarvik Healing Facility. Although university ethics approval was received for the research, I encountered resistance when …

Criminal Heroes In Television: Exploring Moral Ambiguity In Law And Justice, Amy Henry

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Criminal justice is a popular theme in both news and entertainment media. How crime and justice issues are framed can actually legitimize corruption in a society. As research reveals the public’s dissatisfaction with the current failing retributive justice system, popular television series’ are confronting its flaws (Jerre, 2013). Utilizing a cultural criminological and social constructionist orientation, the following research examines anti-hero narratives in two highly rated crime-drama series, Breaking Bad and Sons of Anarchy. The main research questions examine: How the criminal protagonist or anti-hero is constructed in television crime procedurals? What claims about crime, criminality, law and justice …

Loose Coupling And Defining Deviance Down: Correctional Officers’ Perceptions Of Organizational Responses To Mental Health And Well-Being., Victoria M. Baker

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Correctional work is characterized by high rates of occupational stress, which can produce a plethora of negative outcomes for the officers employed within such institutions. The present study examines Canadian provincial correctional officers’ perceptions of how occupational stress is created within the context of their employment. Through in-depth interviews with 11 correctional officers, I examine the political, organizational, and cultural factors that are perceived to negatively affect employee stress and well-being. From this analysis, I present three principal arguments. First, I uncover how correctional officers perceive ministerial policies to be loosely coupled from frontline practices. I argue that this loose …

Using Social Disorganization Theory To Explore Neighbourhood Effects On Violent Crime: A Case Study Of The City Of Brantford, Ontario, Ni-Shan Ho

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The purpose of this study was to explore neighbourhood characteristics related to social disorganization theory and to ascertain whether socioeconomic disadvantage, family disruption, residential instability and young population structure were predictive of neighbourhood violent crime in the city of Brantford, Ontario, as a case study. A two-step analysis was conducted using data derived from the National Household Survey (NHS), the 2011 census and the Brantford Police Service records management system (BPS-RMS). A descriptive analysis of Brantford’s 21 census tracts (CT) was conducted to explore patterns of social disorganization variables and violent crime in each of the city’s 21 CT neighbourhoods. …

Based On Actual Events: Surveillance, Fear And Crime Control In Found-Footage Horror Films, Cassandra Persaud

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

In recent years, found-footage horror films have reappeared with increasing popularity, leading to its recognition as the current horror subgenre du jour. Its amateur style of filmmaking has allowed the subgenre to explore public concerns around the growth of technology, the use of surveillance, and crime control. Found-footage horror films offer a unique platform for analysis as they are framed around presenting the ‘footage’ in the film as factual or reality. In this research study, themes and narratives around the use of surveillance and the production of the docile body in found-footage horror films were examined. The study involved an …

Jailhouse Informants In Canadian Criminal Courts, Olena Beshley

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Criminal justice systems in Canada and around the world have been established to deal with matters that require attention, punishment, and justice. An important function of criminal justice systems is the evaluation of evidence presented in the court of law. Evidence from jailhouse informants who testify that they have been privy to confessions of crimes is a contentious issue. Much of the scholarly literature available to date on wrongful conviction cases focuses on causes of insufficient and unreliable evidence obtained through different techniques and from different sources. Despite the high number of investigations into wrongful conviction cases, the subject of …