Ryan Broll

‘Uppity civilians’ and ‘cyber-vigilantes’: The role of the general public in policing cyber-crime:

The distributed nature of the Internet requires that security issues be addressed through collaborative efforts within and across various sets of public and private actors. Drawing on nodal governance theory, this article explores one aspect of the role that the general public can and does play in the field of cyber-security: civilian policing of the Internet. In particular, we examine the motives and actions of regular citizens, who use their computer skills to identify, track and collect information on the activities of suspected criminal offenders. Whereas some groups use such information to engage in vigilante acts, the groups that we study work cooperatively with police, collecting information to pass onto criminal justice agencies. We suggest that these collectives and their members are a potentially useful, if under-valued, component of cyber-security networks.

‘All it takes is one TV show to ruin it’: a police perspective on police-media relations in the era of expanding prime time crime markets

In this article, we draw on interviews conducted with Canadian police investigators for a study of mass media representations of police work to better understand their unique perspectives on the nature of police-media relations. In contrast to the orthodox position of the policing literature that holds that police are the dominant partner in the police-media relationship, investigators interviewed felt that they had lost control over representations of their work in media stories. This loss of control is attributed, in large part, to the pressure placed on reporters to feed an insatiable public appetite for crime-related stories. Particularly, worrying for investigators is the belief that they are no longer able to maintain secrecy over their investigative activities and techniques – a shift that they see as having a significant negative impact on their work. What is required, officers believe, is better collaborative means of working with news media outlets.

“Every Time I Try to Get Out, I Get Pushed Back”1: The Role of Violent Victimization in Women’s Experience of Multiple Episodes of Homelessness

Research shows that, for most people, homelessness is not a chronic state that one enters and never leaves. Instead, homelessness tends to be dynamic, with individuals cycling in and out of multiple periods of homelessness throughout their lives. Despite this recognition, and a wealth of research on the causes of homelessness, generally, there is a lack of scholarship on the pathways to multiple episodes of homelessness. In particular, the relationship between violent victimization and women’s likelihood of being homeless multiple times is largely unexplored. Drawing on data collected from 269 structured interviews conducted with women using the services of homeless shelters and/or transitional housing in three U.S. and two U.K. cities, we use multivariate logistic regression to assess whether violent victimization increases women’s likelihood of experiencing multiple episodes of homelessness. Our results show that adult victims of stranger-perpetrated physical assault are significantly more likely to be homeless on multiple occasions. In addition, those who experience multiple forms of victimization (e.g., physical and sexual abuse) in childhood, adulthood, and/or across the life course are significantly more likely to experience multiple episodes of homelessness. Given recent efforts to eradicate homelessness, our results suggest specific vulnerable groups that may benefit from targeted social and policy interventions.