Katharina Maier
Biographic Data
| ID | 4140127 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Katharina Maier |
| GIVEN NAMES | Katharina |
| FAMILY NAME | Maier |
| SIGNATURE | MAIER K |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Winnipeg |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0678-2854 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 32 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 61 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 32 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Trauma, empowerment, and resilience
Introduction: Canada has endorsed the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) target to end the HIV epidemic by 2030. However, Canada has reported increases in HIV diagnoses for five consecutive years since 2019, with Manitoba's provincial rates three times the national average. This study examines mental health factors that may impact engagement in care among people living with HIV in Manitoba. Methods: For this qualitative study, 32…
Service providers’ perspectives on facilitators and recommendations for improving HIV care in Manitoba, Canada
Background: We aimed to identify facilitators and recommendations for improving HIV care in Manitoba, Canada from service providers' perspectives. Methods: This study is a component of a participatory action research study examining the interrelatedness of houselessness, substance use and other factors on HIV care. We conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 27 HIV service providers in Manitoba (Canada). Interviews were transcribed, co…
Barriers and recommendations for harm reduction services among people living with HIV in Manitoba, Canada
Introduction: In 2022, the province of Manitoba, Canada, recorded its highest increases in substance-related deaths and new HIV diagnoses. The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated access barriers to harm reduction services across the country. Given the intertwined relationship between HIV and injection substance use, we sought to better understand People Living with HIV's (PLHIV) access barriers to harm reduction services, and recommendations for improv…
They Stole All My Shit”
Drawing on interviews with 65 people experiencing homelessness (PEH) in Victoria, British Columbia (Canada), this article examines the role and impact of municipal by-laws’ daily governance of PEH and their possessions. We argue PEH’s possessions are a site of governance that by-law officers use to exert both punitive control and responsibilization onto PEH’s lives. We show how the daily governance of possessions enhances and reinforces existing …
You’re Walking into Situations Where You Just Really Don’t Know How It’s Going to Go Down’
Following interviews with 150 Canadian federal parole officers employed in prisons or community spaces, we ‘spatialize’ parole work by analysing how participants perceive and navigate risk and use emotional labour in relation to their carceral workspaces. Employing Henri Lefebvre’s theorization of the social production of space, we analyse how parole officers’ feelings of vulnerability arise from the interaction of the built environment with peop…
Drug Treatment Courts According to Criminal Defence Lawyers
Defence lawyers working in lower criminal courts are increasingly invited to consider a variety of holistic or alternative strategies like drug treatment courts (DTC). This raises new ethical and practical questions. Scholars have been critical, showing how specialized courts circumvent the principle of the presumption of innocence, impose onerous conditions and surveillance, and lack the resources required to support participants over the long t…
Does house arrest impede the working alliance between probation officers and their clients? A comparison of home detention and probation cases
For serious offences, or for offenders with significant prior criminal histories, home detention offers an alternative to incarceration. House arrest nvolves a restrictive curfew that many offenders perceive as punitive, but probation officers must still establish rapport and secure compliance. One tool for assessing the therapeutic relationship, or working alliance, is the Working Alliance Inventory (WAI). This study compares WAI scores between …
You have to be grateful that they have eyes watching over us
Relationships between private security and People Experiencing Homelessness (PEH) are largely portrayed in negative, controlling, and punitive terms. Studies have shown that like police, security guards regularly engage in behaviors that impede PEH's access to public spaces and produce harm. By contrast, drawing upon interviews with 50 PEH in a mid-sized Canadian city, our research examining PEH's experiences with security suggests these relation…
They don’t do nothing’
Private security guards are increasingly supplementing public police in the policing of urban parks. In the context of this expansion, little is known about how people who frequent and depend on access to these spaces, such as street-involved people who use drugs, view and experience private security. Drawing upon 30 interviews and ethnographic observations with unhoused, street-involved people who use drugs in a small Canadian city, findings sho…
Hate Crime and Class Vulnerability
Advocates and academics have increasingly called on governments to recognize anti-homeless violence as a hate crime and type of domestic extremism, representing a broader trend in Westernized countries for responding to social issues through anti-hate policies. Can these approaches protect unhoused people? Drawing upon ethnographic interviews and observation with 50 unhoused community members in a Canadian city, we outline their experiences with …
I don’t like guns but having one in Winnipeg right now would feel safer
In 2018–2019, there was a surge of local news media coverage in Winnipeg, Canada about what news media described as “brazen” liquor store theft. Online discussion and social media platforms provided segments of the public with opportunities to assert claims about the causes and consequences of this putative crime wave as well as potential solutions within and outside the penal system. These online fora allowed internet communities to imagine new …
The ones in red
Parole Work in Canada
Internationally, parole work is loaded with tensions, particularly when supervising a people convicted of sex crimes (PCSCs) who, due to their criminal history, are stigmatized and occupy the lowest rungs of the status hierarchy in prison and society more broadly. Drawing on analyses of interview data from federal parole officers ( n = 150) employed by Correctional Service Canada, we interpret their perceptions and feelings about overseeing re-en…
“You have to be really careful, in this environment, of what you say and what you do”
Drawing on existing literature on organizational culture in correctional work, in the current article we augment scholarship on community correctional services, specifically parole work, by considering how organizational culture, as narrated by frontline parole officers, impacts parole officers” feelings toward their work and their own health and well-being. Using the insights gained from 150 qualitative interviews with parole officers across Can…
“Making a Difference”
Prisons are rarely conceptualized as promoting “positivity” in the lives of people who are incarcerated (PWAI) or correctional workers (CWs). Analyzing data from 908 open-ended survey responses of Canadian provincial and territorial correctional employees, we present nuances to the more negative constructions of carceral environments; namely, that many CWs work to better the lives of marginalized and vulnerable criminalized people. CWs are able t…
It's just not the same”
Gender, risk, and presentation of self in “caring” prison work
While scholars have investigated how prison workers understand and navigate occupational risks through performances of gender, most studies have focused on staff in security roles whose organizational cultures value displays of masculinities premised on characteristics such as toughness and stoicism. Less scholarly attention has considered how prison staff in nonsecurity roles, who perform duties oriented toward using interpersonal skills and hel…
I’ve Had Cases That Have Gone in the Wrong Direction and That Has Affected Me”
Parole officers are central actors in the penal system as their decisions can affect the timing of a person’s release from prison and also restrict or enable their freedoms in the community upon release. Existing research on parole examines how parole officers think about and govern ex-prisoners via techniques of surveillance, regulation, and support. Few studies, however, provide qualitative insight into how parole officers experience their occu…
Desistance, Social Justice and Lived Experience
Wer „trägt“ die Schulsozialarbeit
Der vorliegende Artikel reflektiert Trägerstrukturen in der Schulsozialarbeit vor dem Hintergrund einer Befragung von Schulsozialarbeitsträgern in Baden-Württemberg. Schulsozialarbeit wird theoretisch als Jugendhilfeangebot am Ort Schule und damit in einer Organisation verortet, die primär auf andere Ziele ausgerichtet ist. Der Beitrag zeigt bisherige Leerstellen im Fachdiskurs zu Schulsozialarbeit auf, indem entgegen der vorrangigen Diskussion –…
A qualitative comparison of how people who use drugs’ perceptions and experiences of policing affect supervised consumption services access in two cities
The darkest time in our history”
In September 2018, there was a surge of news stories about liquor store theft in Winnipeg, Canada that resulted in public and political calls for action, and ultimately led to the introduction of a range of new security and surveillance measures at government owned liquor stores. This brief news cycle provided opportunities for various social actors, politicians, and authorities to make claims about the nature of crime and society more broadly. T…
Marie-Eve Sylvestre, Nicholas Blomley and Céline Bellot, Red Zones
In this line of work, boundaries are important”
The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly changed how correctional systems, including parole processes, work and function. As essential workers, parole officers continued to work through the pandemic, despite the upheaval to their typical occupational routines. Through these challenging times, they worked to meet the needs of parolees; yet, the challenges brought on by the pandemic caused considerable stress and created new occupational risks and v…
Prison didn’t change me, I have changed”
Drawing on interview data with over 50 male former prisoners in Ontario, Canada, we examine male ex-prisoners' narratives of change within prison settings. Specifically, we focus on how ex-prisoners talk about change to self and their persona, as they reflect back on both their pre-prison selves and the ways they believe prison changed them. We find that these ex-prisoners described prison as a time where they developed a more general sense of po…
Strategic masculinities
Expressions of masculinity in prison are most often characterized as being structured in response to an environment that encourages displays of stoicism, bravery, physical prowess and violence/aggression. However, we found that the antagonistic, precarious and risk-prone environment of the prison shapes prisoners’ behaviours and the constitution of ‘normative’ and hegemonic masculinities in more nuanced ways than prior research suggests. Drawing …
I’ve Had Cases That Have Gone in the Wrong Direction and That Has Affected Me”
Parole officers are central actors in the penal system as their decisions can affect the timing of a person’s release from prison and also restrict or enable their freedoms in the community upon release. Existing research on parole examines how parole officers think about and govern ex-prisoners via techniques of surveillance, regulation, and support. Few studies, however, provide qualitative insight into how parole officers experience their occu…
Mobilizing’ prisoner reentry research
To date, prisoner reentry has been treated as a generic process—that is, people ‘reenter,’ without much specification regarding when and/or where this ‘reentry’ occurs. Drawing on in-depth interviews with halfway house residents in a north-western Canadian city, this article seeks to unpack the concept of prisoner reentry by exploring its spatial-temporal dimensions. I conceptualize prisoner reentry as a temporally fragmented sometimes piecemeal …
The prisoner’s dilemma
Drawing on interview data with 56 former prisoners in Canada, we examine how male prisoners understand, experience, and respond to threat while incarcerated. We show that prisoners face a variety of different and often competing threats, resulting from prisoner interactions (e.g. threat of physical violence for being a “snitch”) on the one side, and institutional powers and procedures on the other side (e.g. threat of delayed release from prison)…
Prison didn’t change me, I have changed”
Drawing on interview data with over 50 male former prisoners in Ontario, Canada, we examine male ex-prisoners' narratives of change within prison settings. Specifically, we focus on how ex-prisoners talk about change to self and their persona, as they reflect back on both their pre-prison selves and the ways they believe prison changed them. We find that these ex-prisoners described prison as a time where they developed a more general sense of po…
Hate Crime and Class Vulnerability
Advocates and academics have increasingly called on governments to recognize anti-homeless violence as a hate crime and type of domestic extremism, representing a broader trend in Westernized countries for responding to social issues through anti-hate policies. Can these approaches protect unhoused people? Drawing upon ethnographic interviews and observation with 50 unhoused community members in a Canadian city, we outline their experiences with …
The ones in red
Gender, risk, and presentation of self in “caring” prison work
While scholars have investigated how prison workers understand and navigate occupational risks through performances of gender, most studies have focused on staff in security roles whose organizational cultures value displays of masculinities premised on characteristics such as toughness and stoicism. Less scholarly attention has considered how prison staff in nonsecurity roles, who perform duties oriented toward using interpersonal skills and hel…
Drug Treatment Courts According to Criminal Defence Lawyers
Defence lawyers working in lower criminal courts are increasingly invited to consider a variety of holistic or alternative strategies like drug treatment courts (DTC). This raises new ethical and practical questions. Scholars have been critical, showing how specialized courts circumvent the principle of the presumption of innocence, impose onerous conditions and surveillance, and lack the resources required to support participants over the long t…
You have to be grateful that they have eyes watching over us
Relationships between private security and People Experiencing Homelessness (PEH) are largely portrayed in negative, controlling, and punitive terms. Studies have shown that like police, security guards regularly engage in behaviors that impede PEH's access to public spaces and produce harm. By contrast, drawing upon interviews with 50 PEH in a mid-sized Canadian city, our research examining PEH's experiences with security suggests these relation…
They don’t do nothing’
Private security guards are increasingly supplementing public police in the policing of urban parks. In the context of this expansion, little is known about how people who frequent and depend on access to these spaces, such as street-involved people who use drugs, view and experience private security. Drawing upon 30 interviews and ethnographic observations with unhoused, street-involved people who use drugs in a small Canadian city, findings sho…
I don’t like guns but having one in Winnipeg right now would feel safer
In 2018–2019, there was a surge of local news media coverage in Winnipeg, Canada about what news media described as “brazen” liquor store theft. Online discussion and social media platforms provided segments of the public with opportunities to assert claims about the causes and consequences of this putative crime wave as well as potential solutions within and outside the penal system. These online fora allowed internet communities to imagine new …
The darkest time in our history”
In September 2018, there was a surge of news stories about liquor store theft in Winnipeg, Canada that resulted in public and political calls for action, and ultimately led to the introduction of a range of new security and surveillance measures at government owned liquor stores. This brief news cycle provided opportunities for various social actors, politicians, and authorities to make claims about the nature of crime and society more broadly. T…
In this line of work, boundaries are important”
The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly changed how correctional systems, including parole processes, work and function. As essential workers, parole officers continued to work through the pandemic, despite the upheaval to their typical occupational routines. Through these challenging times, they worked to meet the needs of parolees; yet, the challenges brought on by the pandemic caused considerable stress and created new occupational risks and v…
Gail A Caputo, A Halfway House for Women
Strategic masculinities
Expressions of masculinity in prison are most often characterized as being structured in response to an environment that encourages displays of stoicism, bravery, physical prowess and violence/aggression. However, we found that the antagonistic, precarious and risk-prone environment of the prison shapes prisoners’ behaviours and the constitution of ‘normative’ and hegemonic masculinities in more nuanced ways than prior research suggests. Drawing …
The prisoner’s dilemma
Drawing on interview data with 56 former prisoners in Canada, we examine how male prisoners understand, experience, and respond to threat while incarcerated. We show that prisoners face a variety of different and often competing threats, resulting from prisoner interactions (e.g. threat of physical violence for being a “snitch”) on the one side, and institutional powers and procedures on the other side (e.g. threat of delayed release from prison)…
Desistance, Social Justice and Lived Experience
Intermediary workers
Drawing on interviews with halfway house staff, this article provides insight into how these workers conceive of their work and occupational identities within the specific context of the halfway house. Specifically, I examine how halfway house workers seek to differentiate their work and approach to governing former prisoners from that of parole officers. I demonstrate how halfway house workers in this study capitalized on their intermediary posi…
Sozialraumorientierte Schulsozialarbeit an Sekundarschulen in Baden-Württemberg
Das Forschungsprojekt „Sozialraumorientierte Schulsozialarbeit an Sekundarschulen in Baden-Württemberg“ (SOSSA_SEK) untersucht im Auftrag des Kommunalverbands für Jugend und Soziales Baden-Württemberg Praxen, Rahmenbedingungen und Nutzen sozialraumorientierter Schulsozialarbeit an Sekundarschulen. Mit Hilfe eines multiperspektivischen Forschungsdesigns wird das professionelle Handeln von Schulsozialarbeitsfachkräften und deren Bezüge zu den Sozia…
Mobilizing’ prisoner reentry research
To date, prisoner reentry has been treated as a generic process—that is, people ‘reenter,’ without much specification regarding when and/or where this ‘reentry’ occurs. Drawing on in-depth interviews with halfway house residents in a north-western Canadian city, this article seeks to unpack the concept of prisoner reentry by exploring its spatial-temporal dimensions. I conceptualize prisoner reentry as a temporally fragmented sometimes piecemeal …
Prison didn’t change me, I have changed”
Drawing on interview data with over 50 male former prisoners in Ontario, Canada, we examine male ex-prisoners' narratives of change within prison settings. Specifically, we focus on how ex-prisoners talk about change to self and their persona, as they reflect back on both their pre-prison selves and the ways they believe prison changed them. We find that these ex-prisoners described prison as a time where they developed a more general sense of po…
Desistance, Social Justice and Lived Experience
Wer „trägt“ die Schulsozialarbeit
Der vorliegende Artikel reflektiert Trägerstrukturen in der Schulsozialarbeit vor dem Hintergrund einer Befragung von Schulsozialarbeitsträgern in Baden-Württemberg. Schulsozialarbeit wird theoretisch als Jugendhilfeangebot am Ort Schule und damit in einer Organisation verortet, die primär auf andere Ziele ausgerichtet ist. Der Beitrag zeigt bisherige Leerstellen im Fachdiskurs zu Schulsozialarbeit auf, indem entgegen der vorrangigen Diskussion –…
A qualitative comparison of how people who use drugs’ perceptions and experiences of policing affect supervised consumption services access in two cities
The darkest time in our history”
In September 2018, there was a surge of news stories about liquor store theft in Winnipeg, Canada that resulted in public and political calls for action, and ultimately led to the introduction of a range of new security and surveillance measures at government owned liquor stores. This brief news cycle provided opportunities for various social actors, politicians, and authorities to make claims about the nature of crime and society more broadly. T…
Marie-Eve Sylvestre, Nicholas Blomley and Céline Bellot, Red Zones
In this line of work, boundaries are important”
The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly changed how correctional systems, including parole processes, work and function. As essential workers, parole officers continued to work through the pandemic, despite the upheaval to their typical occupational routines. Through these challenging times, they worked to meet the needs of parolees; yet, the challenges brought on by the pandemic caused considerable stress and created new occupational risks and v…
Parole Work in Canada
Internationally, parole work is loaded with tensions, particularly when supervising a people convicted of sex crimes (PCSCs) who, due to their criminal history, are stigmatized and occupy the lowest rungs of the status hierarchy in prison and society more broadly. Drawing on analyses of interview data from federal parole officers ( n = 150) employed by Correctional Service Canada, we interpret their perceptions and feelings about overseeing re-en…
“You have to be really careful, in this environment, of what you say and what you do”
Drawing on existing literature on organizational culture in correctional work, in the current article we augment scholarship on community correctional services, specifically parole work, by considering how organizational culture, as narrated by frontline parole officers, impacts parole officers” feelings toward their work and their own health and well-being. Using the insights gained from 150 qualitative interviews with parole officers across Can…
“Making a Difference”
Prisons are rarely conceptualized as promoting “positivity” in the lives of people who are incarcerated (PWAI) or correctional workers (CWs). Analyzing data from 908 open-ended survey responses of Canadian provincial and territorial correctional employees, we present nuances to the more negative constructions of carceral environments; namely, that many CWs work to better the lives of marginalized and vulnerable criminalized people. CWs are able t…
It's just not the same”
Gender, risk, and presentation of self in “caring” prison work
While scholars have investigated how prison workers understand and navigate occupational risks through performances of gender, most studies have focused on staff in security roles whose organizational cultures value displays of masculinities premised on characteristics such as toughness and stoicism. Less scholarly attention has considered how prison staff in nonsecurity roles, who perform duties oriented toward using interpersonal skills and hel…
I’ve Had Cases That Have Gone in the Wrong Direction and That Has Affected Me”
Parole officers are central actors in the penal system as their decisions can affect the timing of a person’s release from prison and also restrict or enable their freedoms in the community upon release. Existing research on parole examines how parole officers think about and govern ex-prisoners via techniques of surveillance, regulation, and support. Few studies, however, provide qualitative insight into how parole officers experience their occu…
They don’t do nothing’
Private security guards are increasingly supplementing public police in the policing of urban parks. In the context of this expansion, little is known about how people who frequent and depend on access to these spaces, such as street-involved people who use drugs, view and experience private security. Drawing upon 30 interviews and ethnographic observations with unhoused, street-involved people who use drugs in a small Canadian city, findings sho…
Hate Crime and Class Vulnerability
Advocates and academics have increasingly called on governments to recognize anti-homeless violence as a hate crime and type of domestic extremism, representing a broader trend in Westernized countries for responding to social issues through anti-hate policies. Can these approaches protect unhoused people? Drawing upon ethnographic interviews and observation with 50 unhoused community members in a Canadian city, we outline their experiences with …
I don’t like guns but having one in Winnipeg right now would feel safer
In 2018–2019, there was a surge of local news media coverage in Winnipeg, Canada about what news media described as “brazen” liquor store theft. Online discussion and social media platforms provided segments of the public with opportunities to assert claims about the causes and consequences of this putative crime wave as well as potential solutions within and outside the penal system. These online fora allowed internet communities to imagine new …
The ones in red
Service providers’ perspectives on facilitators and recommendations for improving HIV care in Manitoba, Canada
Background: We aimed to identify facilitators and recommendations for improving HIV care in Manitoba, Canada from service providers' perspectives. Methods: This study is a component of a participatory action research study examining the interrelatedness of houselessness, substance use and other factors on HIV care. We conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 27 HIV service providers in Manitoba (Canada). Interviews were transcribed, co…
Political science (22 works) · Sociology (22 works) · Criminology (20 works) · Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis (18 works) · Psychology (16 works) · Homelessness and Social Issues (15 works) · Law (12 works) · Public relations (10 works) · Social Psychology (10 works) · Law (9 works)