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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, an increasingly accepted institutional practice in the policing world, and K9 units. Specifically, the authors examine rationales for sponsoring and financially supporting K9 units in Canada and the USA.

The authors focus on four main themes that emerged in analysis of media articles, interview transcripts, and the results of freedom of information requests.

These four rationales or repertoires of discourse are: police dogs as heroes; dogs as crime fighters; cute K9s; and police dogs as uncontroversial donation recipients.

After drawing attention to the expanding role of police foundations in these funding endeavors, the authors reflect on what these findings mean for understanding private sponsorship of public police as well as K9 units in North America and elsewhere. The authors draw attention to the possibility of perceived and actual corruption when private, corporate monies become the main channel through which K9 and other police units are funded.

This paper aims to examine the online communications, symbolism and imagery of 35 community crime prevention and crime watch groups across Canada to explore how these groups organize themselves and assess the resulting community actions.

Contributing to digital criminology, gathering data from open access platforms such as Facebook and online platforms such as websites, the authors analyse communications from community crime prevention and crime watch groups in 12 Canadian cities. The authors used qualitative content analysis to explore the types of posts to assess trends and patterns in types of ideas communicated and symbolized.

Whilst such groups bring the community together to help promote community safety, the groups may also encourage stereotyping, shaming and even vigilantism through misrepresenting the amount of crime occurring in the community and focusing on fear. The authors demonstrate how crime prevention becomes sidelined amongst most of the groups, and how intense crime reporting and the focus on fear derail actual community development.

The current study is limited to two years of posts from each group under examination. Interviews with members of online community crime prevention and crime watch groups would provide insights into the lived experience of regular users and their reasons for interacting with the group.

Given some of the vigilante-style the actions of such groups, the authors would suggest these groups pose a governance problem for local governments.

Community crime prevention and crime watch groups are not a new phenomenon, but their activities are moving online in ways that deserve criminological research. The authors contribute to the field of digital criminology by researching how online communications shape community crime prevention organizations and how ideas about regulation of crime and social control circulate online. The authors also explain how this community crime prevention trend may contribute to issues of vigilantism and increased transgression.

Digital evidence is now infused in many (or arguably most) cases of sexual assault, which has refigured investigative tools, policing strategies and sources of cynicism for those working in sex crime units. Although cynicism, both its sources and affects, is widely studied among scholars of work and policing, little is known about how police working in sex crime units experience, mitigate and express cynicism. The purpose of this paper is to fill this gap in understanding and explore the role of cynicism amongst investigators working in sex crime units.

To address this research gap, the authors conducted 70 semi-structured in-depth interviews and two focus groups with members of police services organizations across Canada working in sex crime units.

Examining sources of cynicism and emotional experiences, the authors reveal that officers in these units normalize and neutralize organizational and intra-organizational sources of cynicism, and cope with the potentially traumatizing and emotionally draining realities of undertaking this form of “dirty work.” The authors show that officer cynicism extends beyond offenders into organizational and operational aspects of their occupations and their lived experiences outside of work, which has implications for literature on police work, cynicism and digital policing.

The authors contribute to the literature on cyber policing by, first, examining sex crimes unit member’s sources of cynicism in relation to sex crimes and the digital world and, second, by exploring sources of cynicism in police organizations and other branches in the criminal justice system. The authors examine how such cynicism seeps into relationships outside of the occupation. The authors’ contribution is in showing that cynicism related to police dirty work is experienced in relation to “front” and “back” regions (Dick, 2005) but also in multiple organizational and social spheres. The authors contribute to the extant literature on dirty work insofar as it addresses the underexplored dirty work associated with policing cyber environments and the morally tainted elements of such policing tasks.

Police services, police associations and police foundations now engage in philanthropy and these efforts are communicated using social media. This paper examines social media framing of the philanthropic and charitable work of police in Canada.

Drawing from discourse and semiotic analyses, the authors examined the ways that police communications frame contributions to charity and community’s well-being. Tweets were analyzed for themes, hashtags and images that conveyed the philanthropic work of police services, police associations as well as police foundations.

The authors discovered four main forms of framing in these social media communications, focusing on community, diversity, youth and crime prevention. The authors argue that police used these communications as mechanisms to flaunt social capital and to boost perceptions of legitimacy and benevolence.

More analyses are needed to examine such representations over time and in multiple jurisdictions.

Examining police communications about philanthropy not only reveals insights about the politics of giving but also the political use of social media by police.

Social media is used by organizations to position themselves in social networks. The increased use of social media by police, for promoting philanthropic work, is political in the sense that it aims to bolster a sense of legitimacy.

Purpose – 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.

Methodology/approach – ATI/FOI requests constitute a novel method of data collection that has methodological and also epistemological implications for researchers.

Findings – The chapter explains how to use ATI/FOI requests in social science as well as how to navigate challenges and barriers ATI/FOI users regularly face.

Originality/value – There is a paucity of writings on use of ATI/FOI requests in socio-legal studies, criminal justice studies, and criminology. The chapter reveals the value of using ATI/FOI in social science and the originality of the data that ATI/FOI requests can result in.

Purpose – During the COVID-19 pandemic, Canadian jurisdictions have varied in terms of their reporting of COVID-19 cases among prisoners and prison staff. Engaging with literatures on the policing of criminological knowledge and prison opacity, this chapter examines how multiple approaches to newsmaking criminology including blog posts, op-ed writing, report publishing, and expert commentary can challenge state secrecy in ways that help generate proactive disclosure of additional information about the impact and management of the coronavirus behind prison walls.

Methodology/Approach – The authors explore how “flooding the zone” of public debates on pandemic management with the limited, incomplete data made available by authorities works as a knowledge mobilization and research strategy.

Findings – The analysis in this study reveals how a newsmaking criminology approach can help researchers access previously unpublished information from Canadian prison authorities that is crucial to understanding prison policy, practice, and outcomes related to COVID-19.

Originality/Value – This chapter highlights the value of newsmaking criminology as a means of communicating and mobilizing criminological knowledge, as well as generating data in the service of emancipatory research and advocacy.