Christopher D O’connor
Biographic Data
| ID | 148273 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Christopher D O’connor |
| GIVEN NAMES | Christopher D |
| FAMILY NAME | O’connor |
| SIGNATURE | O’CONNOR C D |
| AFFILIATIONS | Ontario Tech University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7198-6274 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 32 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 64 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 32 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Interweaving police culture and social identity theory to enhance understandings of police officer mental health and wellness
The mental health and wellness (MHW) of police officers is a global concern. Although many individual-level programs have been implemented in recent years to help officers cope with traumatic events, these initiatives overlook the structural-level conditions that frame how MHW is perceived in police organizations. Drawing on police culture and social identity theory, this paper argues that progress requires attention to three areas: restructuring…
Police legitimacy and digital technologies: Integrating procedural justice theorizing, dialogic legitimacy, and police facial recognition technology adoption
Police legitimacy is conceived as constantly being reconstituted through people’s interactions with police. Previous research on procedural justice and legitimacy has mostly focused on in-person police-community interaction. However, the increasing use of digital technologies by police has meant that more policing is done online and without face-to-face interaction with the public. Using facial recognition technology as an exemplar, this paper ar…
The eyes and ears of the community: An examination of a Canadian volunteer police program
Community engagement ‘completes the puzzle’: The significance and meaning of community engagement to officers
Research on community engagement largely focuses on the potential benefits of such activities for police services, policing as an industry, and the larger community, such as reduced disorder and anti-social behavior as well as increased confidence and trust in police. Absent from this conversation, however, are the officers who voluntarily initiate or participate in community engagement and the significance of these activities to them. To address…
Incorporating Higher Education into Initial Police Training: An International Comparison of Practices and Challenges
The need for well-trained and educated police officers is key to the delivery of effective and professional policing services. How “well trained and educated” is defined and accomplished is regularly debated and varies. There are long standing visions of effectively linking training and education for police recruits, but these have yet to be completely achieved. This paper describes the training and education of police recruits in four locations …
Public perceptions of facial recognition use by police in Canada
Care leavers’ employment experiences and outcomes: Choices and Social structures
The fluidity of success over time: Understanding the experience of success through the voices of young people
Theoretical conceptualization of youth's success has been based on linear timing and pathways of development, encompassing normative markers of success. These conceptualizations often do not consider the complex, fluid, and changing nature of youth's lives over time. This article goes beyond normative markers of success by drawing on insights from the intersectionality, individualization, and youth transition literatures. Qualitative interviews w…
Entitled young men and powerless young women: An examination of how police and post-secondary school personnel view survivors and campus sexual violence
The police, campus security, and post-secondary school officials continue to pose challenges to student survivors who require guidance and resources from their institutions after experiencing sexual violence. Recently, the provincial government of Ontario, Canada, mandated that all post-secondary institutions in Ontario adopt some form of a stand-alone sexual violence policy for their campuses. Yet, little is known about how post-secondary school…
Towards a Macro-Level Theoretical Understanding of Police Services’ Acquisition of Risk Technologies
Most North American police services have rapidly acquired and implemented a range of emerging and disruptive technologies in recent years. This rapid adoption of technologies has left a significant gap in our theoretical understanding of how police make decisions about which technologies to acquire. While existing research has focused on technology’s impact at the organizational level, the macro-level context that shapes technological acquisition…
The cost of operational complexity: A causal assessment of pre-fire mitigation and wildfire suppression
Thinking about police data: Analysts’ perceptions of data quality in Canadian policing
Policing is increasingly being shaped by data collection and analysis. However, we still know little about the quality of the data police services acquire and utilize. Drawing on a survey of analysts from across Canada, this article examines several data collection, analysis, and quality issues. We argue that as we move towards an era of big data policing it is imperative that police services pay more attention to the quality of the data they col…
Police analysts on the job in Canada: Work experiences, data work, and the move towards evidence-based policing
Analysts working within police services play a key role in translating data into usable and understandable forms of knowledge for police personnel. Despite the increased focus on data and research in policing, we know little about the everyday data work of police analysts. In this article, we review the literature on analysts’ experiences and draw on survey data from analysts working in police services across Canada to examine the types of data w…
People's perceptions of energy technologies in an era of rapid transformation
Communicating with purpose: Image work, social media, and policing
Police services have substantially increased their use of social media in everyday police work. Few researchers have directly asked police services about the purpose their social media accounts serve. Through in-depth interviews conducted with police personnel overseeing police services’ social media sites in Canada, this article examines the reasons provided by police services for creating and operating their social media sites. We argue that th…
Why policing the risk society became a footnote in American police studies: A missed opportunity to move police theorizing forward
Written in 1997, Ericson and Haggerty’s book Policing the Risk Society (PRS) should have had profound effects on police theorizing and research in the United States. In this article, we attempt to explain why this book failed to gain traction within the American policing literature. We argue that PRS was ignored for three reasons: (1) incommensurable theoretical frameworks, (2) timing and aim of the book’s publication, and (3) the intrusiveness o…
Policing mental health: The composition and perceived challenges of Co-response Teams and Crisis Intervention Teams in the Canadian context
Due to an increase in interactions between the police and persons with perceived mental illness (PwPMI), police services have begun deploying specialized crisis responses to more adequately address these calls. One such response is a Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) that is comprised of frontline officers who are specially trained on mental health; another is a Co-Response Team (CRT) where an officer is paired with a mental health practitioner. Wit…
From strain theory to the capacity to aspire: A contribution to the cultural political economy of development
The idea of the capacity to aspire (CtA) has recently been used in attempts to incorporate cultural and psychological factors into political and economic theories of community development. When integrated with capabilities and capital assets approaches, CtA can be used to explain psychological and cultural development traps, but may be incomplete in its formulation. Through a theoretical discussion and a case study in a post disaster situation, w…
Intersectional individualization: Toward a theoretical framework for youth transitioning out of the child welfare system
This article combines insights from Beck’s individualization theory and Crenshaw’s intersectionality theory to enhance understandings of why youth transitioning out of the child welfare system experience risk of poor outcomes. The lack of an adequate theoretical framework restricts our ability to understand the complex lives of these vulnerable youth. This paper argues that combining individualization and intersectionality theory provides a frame…
After the downturn: Perceptions of crime and policing in the southeastern Saskatchewan oil patch
The relationship between crime and the rapid growth and industrialization associated with resource‐based booms in large boomtowns is well‐documented. This study focuses on changes in police‐reported crime and perceptions of crime and disorder in a region experiencing a mini‐boom after the boom subsides. Analyses of survey results of 1,336 respondents living in oil‐impacted and non‐impacted communities in southeastern Saskatchewan reveal several n…
Social media and policing: A review of recent research
Studies of social media's impact on policing have emerged in several disciplines, including criminology, sociology, and communications. Despite their insight, there is no unified body of knowledge regarding this relationship. In an attempt to synthesize extant work, bring coherence to the field, and orient future scholarship, this article summarizes research on social media's implications for practices and perceptions of order maintenance. It doe…
Wildfire risk science facilitates adaptation of fire-prone social-ecological systems to the new fire reality
Large and severe wildfires are an observable consequence of an increasingly arid American West. There is increasing consensus that human communities, land managers, and fire managers need to adapt and learn to live with wildfires. However, a myriad of human and ecological factors constrain adaptation, and existing science-based management strategies are not sufficient to address fire as both a problem and solution. To that end, we present a novel…
Civilising the police: Reconceptualising the role of the state in theories of American policing
The three eras in American policing – political, reform, and community – has become the default theoretical framework within the study of criminal justice, explicitly and implicitly shaping the discourse of police studies. Despite historically informed criticisms of this three-era model, no alternative theory has been proffered as a way of critically thinking about the police. This paper draws on Norbert Elias’ civilising thesis and the role of t…
Policing and Social Media: Social Control in an Era of New Media
Citizen perceptions of fracking: The risks and opportunities of natural gas development in Canada
The police on Twitter: Image management, community building, and implications for policing in Canada
Technology has always played an important role in policing. In recent years, various types of new social networking sites have become important tools for police departments. For example, social networking sites have been used to help solve crimes and communicate directly with the public circumventing the traditional news media. At the same time, the public can more easily communicate directly with, or about, the police. This article examines the …
Insiders and outsiders: Social Change, Deviant Others, and Sense of Community in a Boomtown
In the last decade, the city of Fort McMurray, Alberta has undergone significant social changes due to the rapid growth of the oilsands industry in and around the city. In this short period of time, Fort Murray’s population has more than doubled attracting migrants from all over Canada and internationally to fill labor shortages in the city. In the process, Fort McMurray has become a twenty-first century boomtown. Drawing on in-depth interviews, …
Citizen perceptions of fracking: The risks and opportunities of natural gas development in Canada
Classed, raced, and gendered biographies: Young people's understandings of social structures in a boomtown
As young people attempt to adapt to a rapidly changing society, how they experience school and work has undergone significant changes in recent decades. Youth researchers attempting to understand these changes have drawn heavily on the concepts of agency and structure. In the process, researchers often end up taking a ‘middle-ground’ approach and in turn have critiqued the theorizing of Ulrich Beck for being too focused on agency. This article en…
Oil, Crime, and Disorder: A Methodological Examination of the Oil Boom's Impact in North Dakota
This article examines the impact the oil boom has had on crime and disorder in North Dakota. Particular attention is paid to the methods used to analyze these impacts. Several quantitative analyses, including t-tests and regressions, were performed and critiqued. Overall, few significant relationships were found that could link the oil boom to increases in crime and disorder. In addition, this article introduces location quotients as an alternati…
Intersectional individualization: Toward a theoretical framework for youth transitioning out of the child welfare system
This article combines insights from Beck’s individualization theory and Crenshaw’s intersectionality theory to enhance understandings of why youth transitioning out of the child welfare system experience risk of poor outcomes. The lack of an adequate theoretical framework restricts our ability to understand the complex lives of these vulnerable youth. This paper argues that combining individualization and intersectionality theory provides a frame…
After the downturn: Perceptions of crime and policing in the southeastern Saskatchewan oil patch
The relationship between crime and the rapid growth and industrialization associated with resource‐based booms in large boomtowns is well‐documented. This study focuses on changes in police‐reported crime and perceptions of crime and disorder in a region experiencing a mini‐boom after the boom subsides. Analyses of survey results of 1,336 respondents living in oil‐impacted and non‐impacted communities in southeastern Saskatchewan reveal several n…
Social change, risk, and individualization: Young people’s perceptions of a large-scale oil extraction project
Resource extraction has always played an important role in shaping Canada’s economy and identity. Over the past several years, the province of Alberta has led the charge in helping Canada become a petro-state. Fort McMurray in particular has been significantly impacted by the rapid development of the oilsands in northern Alberta. This article explores how young people living at the center of this resource extraction project viewed the impacts tha…
Auto Theft and Youth Culture: A Nexus of Masculinities, Femininities and Car Culture
This article draws on semi-structured interviews conducted with young offenders as part of ‘The Automobile of the 21st Century’ (AUTO21) national research initiative. AUTO21 is a Canadian research project that aims to strengthen and improve Canada's automotive industry. As part of this initiative, an exploratory research project was undertaken to examine how young people understand their participation in auto theft. Interviews with young auto thi…
Human Pyrogeography: A New Synergy of Fire, Climate and People is Reshaping Ecosystems across the Globe
Climate and fire have shaped global ecosystems for millennia. Today human influence on both of these components is causing changes to ecosystems at a scale and pace not previously seen. This article reviews trends in pyrogeography research, through the lens of interactions between fire, climate and society. We synthesize research on the occurrence and extent of wildland fire, the historic role of climate as a driver of fire regimes, the increasin…
Public perceptions of facial recognition use by police in Canada
Civilising the police: Reconceptualising the role of the state in theories of American policing
The three eras in American policing – political, reform, and community – has become the default theoretical framework within the study of criminal justice, explicitly and implicitly shaping the discourse of police studies. Despite historically informed criticisms of this three-era model, no alternative theory has been proffered as a way of critically thinking about the police. This paper draws on Norbert Elias’ civilising thesis and the role of t…
Auto Theft and Youth Culture: A Nexus of Masculinities, Femininities and Car Culture
This article draws on semi-structured interviews conducted with young offenders as part of ‘The Automobile of the 21st Century’ (AUTO21) national research initiative. AUTO21 is a Canadian research project that aims to strengthen and improve Canada's automotive industry. As part of this initiative, an exploratory research project was undertaken to examine how young people understand their participation in auto theft. Interviews with young auto thi…
Human Pyrogeography: A New Synergy of Fire, Climate and People is Reshaping Ecosystems across the Globe
Climate and fire have shaped global ecosystems for millennia. Today human influence on both of these components is causing changes to ecosystems at a scale and pace not previously seen. This article reviews trends in pyrogeography research, through the lens of interactions between fire, climate and society. We synthesize research on the occurrence and extent of wildland fire, the historic role of climate as a driver of fire regimes, the increasin…
Classed, raced, and gendered biographies: Young people's understandings of social structures in a boomtown
As young people attempt to adapt to a rapidly changing society, how they experience school and work has undergone significant changes in recent decades. Youth researchers attempting to understand these changes have drawn heavily on the concepts of agency and structure. In the process, researchers often end up taking a ‘middle-ground’ approach and in turn have critiqued the theorizing of Ulrich Beck for being too focused on agency. This article en…
The police on Twitter: Image management, community building, and implications for policing in Canada
Technology has always played an important role in policing. In recent years, various types of new social networking sites have become important tools for police departments. For example, social networking sites have been used to help solve crimes and communicate directly with the public circumventing the traditional news media. At the same time, the public can more easily communicate directly with, or about, the police. This article examines the …
Insiders and outsiders: Social Change, Deviant Others, and Sense of Community in a Boomtown
In the last decade, the city of Fort McMurray, Alberta has undergone significant social changes due to the rapid growth of the oilsands industry in and around the city. In this short period of time, Fort Murray’s population has more than doubled attracting migrants from all over Canada and internationally to fill labor shortages in the city. In the process, Fort McMurray has become a twenty-first century boomtown. Drawing on in-depth interviews, …
Oil, Crime, and Disorder: A Methodological Examination of the Oil Boom's Impact in North Dakota
This article examines the impact the oil boom has had on crime and disorder in North Dakota. Particular attention is paid to the methods used to analyze these impacts. Several quantitative analyses, including t-tests and regressions, were performed and critiqued. Overall, few significant relationships were found that could link the oil boom to increases in crime and disorder. In addition, this article introduces location quotients as an alternati…
Policing and Social Media: Social Control in an Era of New Media
Citizen perceptions of fracking: The risks and opportunities of natural gas development in Canada
Social change, risk, and individualization: Young people’s perceptions of a large-scale oil extraction project
Resource extraction has always played an important role in shaping Canada’s economy and identity. Over the past several years, the province of Alberta has led the charge in helping Canada become a petro-state. Fort McMurray in particular has been significantly impacted by the rapid development of the oilsands in northern Alberta. This article explores how young people living at the center of this resource extraction project viewed the impacts tha…
Social media and policing: A review of recent research
Studies of social media's impact on policing have emerged in several disciplines, including criminology, sociology, and communications. Despite their insight, there is no unified body of knowledge regarding this relationship. In an attempt to synthesize extant work, bring coherence to the field, and orient future scholarship, this article summarizes research on social media's implications for practices and perceptions of order maintenance. It doe…
Wildfire risk science facilitates adaptation of fire-prone social-ecological systems to the new fire reality
Large and severe wildfires are an observable consequence of an increasingly arid American West. There is increasing consensus that human communities, land managers, and fire managers need to adapt and learn to live with wildfires. However, a myriad of human and ecological factors constrain adaptation, and existing science-based management strategies are not sufficient to address fire as both a problem and solution. To that end, we present a novel…
Civilising the police: Reconceptualising the role of the state in theories of American policing
The three eras in American policing – political, reform, and community – has become the default theoretical framework within the study of criminal justice, explicitly and implicitly shaping the discourse of police studies. Despite historically informed criticisms of this three-era model, no alternative theory has been proffered as a way of critically thinking about the police. This paper draws on Norbert Elias’ civilising thesis and the role of t…
Communicating with purpose: Image work, social media, and policing
Police services have substantially increased their use of social media in everyday police work. Few researchers have directly asked police services about the purpose their social media accounts serve. Through in-depth interviews conducted with police personnel overseeing police services’ social media sites in Canada, this article examines the reasons provided by police services for creating and operating their social media sites. We argue that th…
Why policing the risk society became a footnote in American police studies: A missed opportunity to move police theorizing forward
Written in 1997, Ericson and Haggerty’s book Policing the Risk Society (PRS) should have had profound effects on police theorizing and research in the United States. In this article, we attempt to explain why this book failed to gain traction within the American policing literature. We argue that PRS was ignored for three reasons: (1) incommensurable theoretical frameworks, (2) timing and aim of the book’s publication, and (3) the intrusiveness o…
Policing mental health: The composition and perceived challenges of Co-response Teams and Crisis Intervention Teams in the Canadian context
Due to an increase in interactions between the police and persons with perceived mental illness (PwPMI), police services have begun deploying specialized crisis responses to more adequately address these calls. One such response is a Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) that is comprised of frontline officers who are specially trained on mental health; another is a Co-Response Team (CRT) where an officer is paired with a mental health practitioner. Wit…
From strain theory to the capacity to aspire: A contribution to the cultural political economy of development
The idea of the capacity to aspire (CtA) has recently been used in attempts to incorporate cultural and psychological factors into political and economic theories of community development. When integrated with capabilities and capital assets approaches, CtA can be used to explain psychological and cultural development traps, but may be incomplete in its formulation. Through a theoretical discussion and a case study in a post disaster situation, w…
Intersectional individualization: Toward a theoretical framework for youth transitioning out of the child welfare system
This article combines insights from Beck’s individualization theory and Crenshaw’s intersectionality theory to enhance understandings of why youth transitioning out of the child welfare system experience risk of poor outcomes. The lack of an adequate theoretical framework restricts our ability to understand the complex lives of these vulnerable youth. This paper argues that combining individualization and intersectionality theory provides a frame…
After the downturn: Perceptions of crime and policing in the southeastern Saskatchewan oil patch
The relationship between crime and the rapid growth and industrialization associated with resource‐based booms in large boomtowns is well‐documented. This study focuses on changes in police‐reported crime and perceptions of crime and disorder in a region experiencing a mini‐boom after the boom subsides. Analyses of survey results of 1,336 respondents living in oil‐impacted and non‐impacted communities in southeastern Saskatchewan reveal several n…
Thinking about police data: Analysts’ perceptions of data quality in Canadian policing
Policing is increasingly being shaped by data collection and analysis. However, we still know little about the quality of the data police services acquire and utilize. Drawing on a survey of analysts from across Canada, this article examines several data collection, analysis, and quality issues. We argue that as we move towards an era of big data policing it is imperative that police services pay more attention to the quality of the data they col…
Police analysts on the job in Canada: Work experiences, data work, and the move towards evidence-based policing
Analysts working within police services play a key role in translating data into usable and understandable forms of knowledge for police personnel. Despite the increased focus on data and research in policing, we know little about the everyday data work of police analysts. In this article, we review the literature on analysts’ experiences and draw on survey data from analysts working in police services across Canada to examine the types of data w…
People's perceptions of energy technologies in an era of rapid transformation
Entitled young men and powerless young women: An examination of how police and post-secondary school personnel view survivors and campus sexual violence
The police, campus security, and post-secondary school officials continue to pose challenges to student survivors who require guidance and resources from their institutions after experiencing sexual violence. Recently, the provincial government of Ontario, Canada, mandated that all post-secondary institutions in Ontario adopt some form of a stand-alone sexual violence policy for their campuses. Yet, little is known about how post-secondary school…
Towards a Macro-Level Theoretical Understanding of Police Services’ Acquisition of Risk Technologies
Most North American police services have rapidly acquired and implemented a range of emerging and disruptive technologies in recent years. This rapid adoption of technologies has left a significant gap in our theoretical understanding of how police make decisions about which technologies to acquire. While existing research has focused on technology’s impact at the organizational level, the macro-level context that shapes technological acquisition…
The cost of operational complexity: A causal assessment of pre-fire mitigation and wildfire suppression
Community engagement ‘completes the puzzle’: The significance and meaning of community engagement to officers
Research on community engagement largely focuses on the potential benefits of such activities for police services, policing as an industry, and the larger community, such as reduced disorder and anti-social behavior as well as increased confidence and trust in police. Absent from this conversation, however, are the officers who voluntarily initiate or participate in community engagement and the significance of these activities to them. To address…
Political science (19 works) · Psychology (17 works) · Sociology (16 works) · Policing Practices and Perceptions (14 works) · Crime Patterns and Interventions (11 works) · Engineering (11 works) · Public relations (11 works) · Criminology (10 works) · Computer Science (7 works) · Law (7 works)