Governing Through Transparency: Investigating the New Access to Information Regime in Canada
This paper examines the state of Canada’s federal access to information (ATI) regime. Drawing from literature on government transparency, we conceptualize Bill C-58 and the problems it proposes to address as a form of policy discordance. We assess …
Deciphering the Decline: A Computational Analysis of Two Decades of Canadian Newspaper Op-Eds on Freedom of Information
Newspaper op-eds are an underexplored mode of communication that frame social, cultural, and political issues. This article uses an unsupervised machine-learning approach called structural topic modelling to map changes in the content of a corpus of …
Changing of the Guards: Private Influences, Privatization, and Criminal Justice in Canada
Changing of the Guards evaluates issues of privatization and private influence across the twenty-first-century Canadian criminal justice system. In recent decades, service outsourcing has spread throughout Canada’s prisons and jails, into its police, …
Jumpstarting the Justice Disciplines: A Computational-Qualitative Approach to Collecting and Analyzing Text and Image Data in Criminology and Criminal Justice Studies
Computational methods are increasingly popular in criminal justice research. As more criminal justice data becomes available in ‘big’ and other digital formats, new means of embracing the computational turn are needed. In this article, we …
Algorithmic thinking in the public interest: navigating technical, legal, and ethical hurdles to web scraping in the social sciences
Web scraping, defined as the automated extraction of information online, is an increasingly important means of producing data in the social sciences. We contribute to emerging social science literature on computational methods by elaborating on web …
Race, Cannabis and the Canadian War on Drugs: An Examination of Cannabis Arrest Data by Race in Five Cities
The enforcement of drug laws in the United States has been heavily racialized. A substantial proportion of individuals arrested and prosecuted for drug possession in America are Black and Latino, despite similar rates of drug use across racial …
Freedom of Information Research and Cultural Studies: A Subterranean Affinity
Introducing the idea of subterranean affinity, this article explores how methodological use of Freedom of Information (FOI) requests can contribute to the field of cultural studies. Contributing to literatures on transparency and secrecy, we consider …
Police Foundation Governance and Accountability: Corporate Interlocks and Private, Nonprofit Influence on Public Police
Police foundations are new private organizations used by public police services to raise corporate monies in North America. This article examines problems of governance and accountability arising in relation to police foundations and police services. …
Freedom of Information and Social Science Research Design
This multidisciplinary volume demonstrates how Freedom of Information (FOI) law and processes can contribute to social science research design across sociology, criminology, political science, anthropology, journalism and education. Comparing the use …
Using Freedom of Information Requests in Socio-Legal Studies, Criminal Justice Studies, and Criminology
The chapter explores the use of freedom of information (ATI/FOI) requests in social science research, with specific focus on using ATI/FOI requests in socio-legal studies, criminal justice studies, and criminology.
Postsecrecy and Place: Secrecy research amidst the ruins of an atomic weapons research facility
Research objective: This chapter will help researchers explore places where secrecy persists despite acts of declassification and derestriction intended to make them more “open” and “transparent”. Research puzzle: The puzzle the chapter addresses in …
Going to the Dogs? Police, Donations, and K9s
Most existing literature on K9 units has focused on the relationship between police handler and canine, or questions about use of force. The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between private donations to public police departments, …
Police-Sponsorship Networks: Benign Ties or Relations of Private Influence?
This article examines relational ties between private sponsors and public police departments based on sponsorship of Canadian and international policing conferences and galas. Using network analysis and descriptive statistics, we investigate ties …
Gift-Giving, Disreputable Exchange, and the Management of Donations in a Police Department
To supplement funding and strengthen relationships with the community, police departments often accept donations from individuals and businesses. These donations are a form of disreputable exchange - they are permitted but laden with the potential …
The Police Foundation’s Rise: Implications of Public Policing’s Dark Money
A new kind of organization has emerged in public policing across the United States and Canada - the ‘police foundation’. The foundation’s private, nonprofit legal status allows it to engage in private fundraising activities that …
Theorizing Freedom of Information: The Live Archive, Obfuscation, and Actor-Network Theory
Freedom of information (FOI) is typically analyzed as a law and legal discourse. In sociology, criminology, and socio-legal studies, FOI is also increasingly used as a method to generate disclosures about inside government practices. Absent from this …
Online Readers’ Comments as Popular Texts: Public Opinions of Paid Duty Policing in Canada
Despite paid-duty policing and associated public opinions being an increasingly controversial topic in Canadian news media, there has been limited research about them. This article combines discourse and content analyses to examine the public …
Ethics Review and Freedom of Information Requests in Qualitative Research
Freedom of information (FOI) is typically analyzed as a law and legal discourse. In sociology, criminology, and socio-legal studies, FOI is also increasingly used as a method to generate disclosures about inside government practices. Absent from this …
Brokering Access Beyond the Border and in the Wild: Comparing Freedom of Information Law and Policy in Canada and the United States
Contributing to literature on jurisdictional variation in freedom of information (FOI) law and policy, we draw from accounts of experiences of FOI requests submitted to police agencies in nine Canadian provinces and ten US states. We conceptualize …
Hannah Arendt and the Art of Secrecy; Or, the Fog of Cobra Mist
Using Hannah Arendt as our guide, we examine the imperfect and at times curious mechanisms through which state projects enact an aura of secrecy and deception. To date, International Political Sociology (IPS) has paid strikingly little attention to …
Criteria for Quality in Qualitative Research and Use of Freedom of Information Requests in the Social Sciences
Freedom of information (FOI) is typically analyzed as a law and legal discourse. In sociology, criminology, and socio-legal studies, FOI is also increasingly used as a method to generate disclosures about inside government practices. Absent from this …
Deception Declassified: The Social Organisation of Cover Storying in a Secret Intelligence Operation
This article asks why and how governments keep secrets from publics, journalists and politicians using the strategy of ‘cover storying’. To develop a theory of cover storying, insights are drawn from political sociologies of state secrecy and from …
High Policing and Access to Information
Brodeur’s concept of high policing is now a staple in sociology and criminology. While scholars have added to debates about high policing by focusing on private provision and pluralization, methodological concerns related to high policing remain …
Occupy Ottawa, Conservation Officers, and Policing Networks in Canada’s Capital City
Conservation officers have been neglected in policing studies literature due to a bias toward municipal and public police. The work of conservation officers and that of conventional public police overlap in ways that have not been explored. This …
