We compared the mental health and wellbeing of correctional workers who completed an online survey either before or during COVID. The pre-COVID data came from participants in Ontario, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Yukon. The during COVID data came from participants in Alberta, British Columbia, Quebec, Northwest Territories, Nunavut. Participants include provincial and territorial correctional workers in operational and administrative roles from community and institutional environments and included youth workers. Operational correctional workers in both environments reported substantial symptoms of mental health disorders, particularly posttraumatic stress disorder and major depressive disorder. Remarkably, the prevalence was consistent or even decreased for those in surveyed during COVID-19, which we attribute to decarceration efforts which reduced staff shortages and supported correctional workers in meeting their occupational responsibilities with greater ease. A specific focus here will be on youth workers, their prevalence of mental health disorders and the high rates of suicide behaviours that are self-reported. We also used qualitative responses to open-ended survey items to contextualize the high symptom prevalence based on participant experiences. We identified insights about participant needs and barriers related to accessing mental health treatments. Recommendations are provided for future research, and for potentially beneficial policies and practices.

Scotland’s record of accomplishment in tackling issues such as stalking and coercive control has been identified as an exemplar. Most recently, the Domestic Abuse Scotland Act (2018) recognised, for the first time, a coercively controlling course of conduct as a crime indicating a more empathetic and understanding criminal justice system. However, it is important to recognise that the Scottish Criminal Justice System (SCJS) is not designed inherently, to meet the needs of those victimised. Consequently, victims can feel disempowered and controlled simultaneously by the bureaucracy in which they find themselves and by the continued abuse of the perpetrator. Therefore, this research explored whether the SCJS facilitates the empowerment of the victims who access its support or exacerbates their disempowerment. Mixed methods were employed (an online survey and interviews utilising the Free Association Narrative Interview Method) and informed by a transformative paradigm. 132 women responded to the survey and 21 were interviewed. The theme of ‘Justice Work’ was identified as a significant and common experience for the majority of participants. Women described the significant amount of practical, bureaucratic, and emotional work that they had to do to keep their cases ‘live’ e.g. conducting their own investigations and gathering evidence, keeping detailed records, and maintaining the visibility of their case within the system. Furthermore, women felt they must manage their communications and behaviour to maintain a sympathetic response from professionals in an effort to keep their case ‘worthy’ of continued investigation. Although in moderation, conducting practical elements of the ‘justice work’ was empowering for some, more often it was experienced as disempowering as women had no choice but to do the work if they wanted their case to progress. This paper will make recommendations for practice within the criminal justice system to minimise the need for justice work by victim/survivors.

Risk has claimed an increasingly dominant role in modern society. Throughout the Anglophone liberal democracies, the role of risk as a driver of law and order policy is an excellent example of the increasingly central positionality of risk in both policy making and politicking. This paper sets out recent developments in the law and order landscape in New Zealand, and examines the role of risk and the narratives around it against perspectives of communities, who are both the audience and the consumers of the policies that result from risk-centric discourse.

This paper presents findings from ongoing research exploring landlord criminality from multiple perspectives. Drawing on interviews with police and non-police (local authority) practitioners, the paper considers the affordances of the private rented sector for landlords and their associates to engage in a variety of criminal behaviours. These behaviours include the use of property to facilitate drug cultivation, modern slavery and trafficking; practices that subvert standard market operation including tax evasion and money laundering; and deliberate harms to potentially vulnerable tenants including illegal eviction, contravention of various tenancy rights, and coercive/exploitative practices. Emerging findings suggest the private rented sector represents a criminogenic environment, consisting of factors which facilitate criminality and severely limit law enforcement interventions. The behaviours of criminal landlords clearly have implications for tenants/victims, for law enforcement and other practitioners who are expected to intervene in this context, and, more generally, for the housing market.