Matthew S Johnston
Biographic Data
| ID | 263623 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Matthew S Johnston |
| GIVEN NAMES | Matthew S |
| FAMILY NAME | Johnston |
| SIGNATURE | JOHNSTON M S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Memorial University of Newfoundland |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0622-2838 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 39 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 65 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 39 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2014 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) Employees
The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) is an unstudied public safety service responsible for protecting national security and thus the safety of all people in Canada. In the current study, we interviewed CSIS employees ( N = 38) to understand their mental health, the implications of their work, and the degree of stigma around mental health in their organization. Findings suggest 61% of interviewees reported being diagnosed with or havi…
Is It Who You Know? A Qualitative Exploration of Informal Relationships in Policing
How police leaders provide development opportunities, promote, and recognize achievements have discernible effects on employees’ commitment and police culture, which can be damaged through negative perceptions. This qualitative case study of one Canadian police organization explores sworn police officers’ ( n = 17) understandings of informal relationships and its effects on officers and their organization. Semistructured interviews were conducted…
“It Was a Very Pleasant Surprise”
OBJECTIVES: Mental health service users are responsible and autonomous individuals who can comprehend their own illness and recovery and therefore engage healthcare professionals in their care. Studies have demonstrated how service users feel more dignified, safe, and respected during mental health treatment when they are listened to by their caregivers and included in treatment decision-making. The physical space and design of mental health faci…
Provincial correctional workers in Ontario
Despite growing attention to the diverse mental health challenges within correctional work, minimal research has focused on the experiences of institutional managers and leaders. The current study analyzed survey responses from institutional managers and leaders in Ontario, Canada ( n = 97), focusing on mental health disorder prevalence, stress exposures, and support seeking practices. Results indicated a high prevalence of mental health disorder…
Exposures to potentially psychologically traumatic events
We discuss our results in the context of correctional worker wellness and conclude with recommendations for policies to address mental health treatment and resource gaps in correctional services. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
Exploring how Canadian Correctional Workers Understand their Adverse Childhood Experiences
We’re Still Good Guys”
Reforming Segregation through the Perspectives of Correctional Officers
Despite international calls to abolish the use of segregation in prisons, the practice has been defended by some Canadian correctional workers as a sometimes-necessary practice to preserve prisoner and staff safety. Informed through a lens of risk and the socio-legal literature on segregation, the current interview study explores perspectives on segregation from 28 correctional officers (COs) employed in provincial correctional services at a pris…
“That’s Not Rehabilitation, That’s Enabling”
Correctional Service Canada implemented Prison Needle Exchange Programs (PNEPs) into federal penitentiaries in 2018 as a harm reduction measure to prevent needle sharing, drug overdose, and limit the spread of infectious disease. However, studies demonstrate how staff resistance hinders the growth of these programs within Canadian prisons. Drawing on interview data produced by 134 federally employed and relatively new correctional officers in Can…
Canadian Provincial and Territorial Correctional Worker Mental Health and Well-Being Study (CWMH)
Previous research assessing correctional worker (CW) mental health has seldom assessed for differences based on jurisdiction or diverse occupational categories. The current study was designed to provide a nuanced quantitative examination of mental health disorder prevalence and related problems among CWs and to qualitatively explore the varying social contexts surrounding CW well-being. We reflect on how we overcame unanticipated challenges and d…
Direct supervision and the epistemic culture of prisons
In this study, we critically examine how provincial correctional officers in Atlantic Canada interpret and disseminate knowledge around direct supervision in the context of a new correctional institution under construction to replace Her [His] Majesty’s Penitentiary—Canada’s oldest prison. Direct supervision is a model intended to facilitate positive, pro-social relationships between correctional staff and incarcerated people, to build therapeuti…
Provincial and territorial correctional service workers
Canadian correctional workers (CWs) experience substantial challenges with mental health, but prevalence estimates have been limited across provincial and territorial services. Participating CWs from all 13 provincial and territorial services (n = 3740) self-selected to complete an online mental health and well-being survey assessing sociodemographic characteristics and symptoms of several mental disorders. Participants worked as correctional off…
Examining the intersection of carceral space and well‐being
In the current study, we explored the prison design and infrastructural changes that Canadian correctional officers consider to be essential in the construction of a new provincial correctional institution intended to replace Her Majesty's Penitentiary (HMP) in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. Analyzing 28 semi‐structured interviews conducted with correctional officers employed at HMP, we found the poor working conditions withi…
Correctional Officer Reflections on How to Address Incarcerated People’s Unmet Needs in Canadian Prisons
Although incarcerated people best understand their needs and rehabilitative processes, the current study explores how correctional officers (COs) understand the needs of people in their custody and care to support their reentry and incarceration experience. Given COs are the lifeline of incarcerated people, penal scholarship should value their input as an essential resource for recognizing what incarcerated people need to desist and prepare for r…
“We shouldn't encourage drug use”
The Prison Needle Exchange Program (PNEP) is a harm reduction initiative which involves providing people who are incarcerated (PWAI) with sterile injection equipment to avoid harms associated with unsterilized needle use, such as the spread of infectious diseases. While current evidence strongly supports the implementation and monitoring of PNEP, the program's success requires institutional support along with staff and prisoner commitment. The cu…
Patient Resistance to Psychiatric Discourse and Power
Drawing on 5090 English reviews of 486 psychiatrists working in Canada posted on ratemds.com, this study explores how mental health service users refuse to become subjectivized by psychiatric discourse and power. We interrogate how digital mediums provide mental health service users with a community of critique to regain control over settings where there are many power imbalances. We argue that websites like ratemds.com act as a digital agora in …
“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…
Assessing Road to Mental Readiness (R2MR) training among correctional workers in Canada
Improving the Mental Health of Correctional Workers
Researchers illuminate the mental health plight of correctional workers by demonstrating a high prevalence of mental health disorders among the group. Yet, structural barriers persist in preventing correctional staff from accessing treatment and support—barriers that may result in more prolonged and pronounced symptoms. We consider correctional staff perspectives on how mental health policies at the organizational level can foster better well-bei…
It Is Difficult to Always Be an Antagonist”
Nurses are exposed to PPTEs at work, but little is known about factors that can aggravate PPTE exposure in the field, impact the mental wellness of nurses, and even shape patient care. We discuss the implications of PPTE involving moral, professional, and ethical dilemmas (i.e., potentially morally injurious events), and provide recommendations for nursing policy and practice
Invisible ghosts of care and penality
Much correctional work is generally misunderstood by the mainstream media and many public circles as solely punitive and authoritative, which has fueled many politicized outcomes for correctional policy, practice and intervention. Reasonably, critical criminological discourse is steered primarily by the perspectives and voices of prisoners and victims. Yet this privileging leaves many questions remaining about how correctional workers in the cont…
Gendered violence and sexualized representations in video games
This research explored how gender portrayals in video games affect gender-related attitudes. Two hundred participants from the United Kingdom and Malaysia participated across three experiments, where the appearance and behaviour of video game characters were manipulated with regard to target (enemy) gender (Study 1), sexually explicit attire (Study 2) and level of character agency (Study 3). We found minimal evidence that exposure to gender-stere…
Fight or flight? Exploring suicide thoughts, experiences, and behaviours among correctional workers and their interventions of agency
Research indicates that, relative to the general public and most other types of public safety personnel, correctional workers are more likely to engage in suicide ideation, planning, and attempts. Yet, less is known about lived experiences towards, of, and beyond suicidality among correctional staff. To contribute to this gap in knowledge, the current study draws on qualitative, open-ended survey response data (n = 94) to explore how Canadian pro…
Suffering in Silence
In the course of their duties, correctional employees face exposure to a variety of potentially psychologically traumatic events (PPTEs). Recent research points to an array of consequences of work experiences on the psychological well-being of correctional staff, including the development of mental health disorders such as posttraumatic stress disorder, general anxiety disorder, and major depressive disorder. Drawing on an open-ended survey respo…
‘Until every cage is empty’
The Radical Animal Liberation Movement (RALM) in North America, including the notorious Animal Liberation Front (ALF) of Canada and the United States and the Frente de Liberación Animal (FLA) in Mexico, is a direct action-focused movement which has been condemned and heavily repressed by media, legislators, and animal industry lobbyists. The question of whether the criminalization of RALM activists is justified or not has been the source of livel…
Through Madness and Back Again
This article traces my struggles with psychosis, arrest, psychiatric institutionalization, and recovery. Mobilizing a cathartic approach to autoethnography, I reveal my resistances, resiliencies, oppressions, nightmares, and recovery processes in the mental health system as I became entangled in another, darker reality and tried desperately to escape it. This work is a contribution to the emerging field of Mad Studies that seeks to privilege live…
We fight for all living things
This qualitative content analysis of online documents compiled from the North American Animal Liberation Front (ALF), Earth Liberation Kollective (ELK) and Grassroots Ontario Animal Liberation (GOAL) network websites and Facebook pages explores how activism within the Radical Animal Liberation Movement (RALM) intersects with other social movements. While most literature to date traces the RALM’s (dis)junctures with other forms of social justice a…
It’s for their own good”
Based on eight in-depth interviews conducted with security guards who work in the psychiatric units of two hospitals located in Ottawa, Canada, this research found that private security agents unknowingly draw on Sykes and Matza’s five techniques of neutralization to justify their use of violence and coercive force against patients and to overcome their feelings of guilt for participating in the administration of brutal intervention practices, in…
Men can change
Some male interviewees encounter difficulties when they try to express their emotions and overcome anti-feminist positions that transform the research setting into places where hyper-masculinities are reproduced. This research finds that critical dialogue is a persuasive tool interviewers can employ to challenge their participants to empathize with perspectives that contest and confront gendered violence, institutional coercion, and misogyny. Dra…
When Madness Meets Madness
Insider-outsider relations in qualitative research have been heavily studied. Yet there is a dearth in the literature exploring how people who have experienced madness produce knowledge and overcome trying circumstances when they do qualitative mental health research with other survivors. This article fills this gap through a critical reflection on my experiences with psychosis and involuntary hospitalization and how they shaped dialogue with my …
Dirty Work, Dirty Resistance
This qualitative content analysis of 723 anonymous reviews of 60 Canadian food service employers, posted on RateMyEmployer.ca, explores how digital spaces publically circulate precarious workers' resistances and management of occupational stigma. We introduce to literature on "dirty work" the concept of socioeconomic hygiene, which identifies a particular kind of social and moral order within which the positions of the subordinated are naturalize…
Correctional Officer Reflections on How to Address Incarcerated People’s Unmet Needs in Canadian Prisons
Although incarcerated people best understand their needs and rehabilitative processes, the current study explores how correctional officers (COs) understand the needs of people in their custody and care to support their reentry and incarceration experience. Given COs are the lifeline of incarcerated people, penal scholarship should value their input as an essential resource for recognizing what incarcerated people need to desist and prepare for r…
Invisible ghosts of care and penality
Much correctional work is generally misunderstood by the mainstream media and many public circles as solely punitive and authoritative, which has fueled many politicized outcomes for correctional policy, practice and intervention. Reasonably, critical criminological discourse is steered primarily by the perspectives and voices of prisoners and victims. Yet this privileging leaves many questions remaining about how correctional workers in the cont…
Suffering in Silence
In the course of their duties, correctional employees face exposure to a variety of potentially psychologically traumatic events (PPTEs). Recent research points to an array of consequences of work experiences on the psychological well-being of correctional staff, including the development of mental health disorders such as posttraumatic stress disorder, general anxiety disorder, and major depressive disorder. Drawing on an open-ended survey respo…
You Gotta Kick Ass a Little Harder Than That
This qualitative research explores the complex and dynamic ways in which eight hospital security men engage in hegemonic masculine practices that subordinate the gender identities of security women and marginalized men. These intensive, in-depth interviews reveal that alpha male status is accomplished through routine demonstrations of physicality and dominance over mental health patients and subordinated guards who present a feminine or queer gen…
Flying through the Cuckoo’s Nest
In this article, we devote ourselves to the task of reconceptualizing agency in the public criminology movement. We develop an imaginative political framework to circumvent the relational tensions currently ensnaring public criminology discourse. Employing the psychoanalytic theory of Slavoj Žižek, we engage the public criminology literature and its agential-activist notion of political engagement to reveal three primary directives dismissive of …
Get paid, get out’
This qualitative content analysis of 503 anonymous online reviews of 52 Canadian call centres posted on RateMyEmployer.ca explores how forms of resistance, alienation and emotional labour are expressed outside of the workplace. Our study finds that digital publics are producing emotive insurgencies and networks of support within marginalised communities that undermine employers’ attempts at deadening the workforce. The reviews exemplify worker aw…
The criminal justice system on trial
Drawing on an affective framework, this qualitative content analysis of the immediate public responses on Twitter in the hours following Jian Ghomeshi’s not guilty verdict (n = 3943 tweets) reveals two key discourses of public opinion. Twitter users depicted the criminal justice system (CJS) as having worked and/or failed, and these intensifying divisions were highly gendered. Members of the public pitted notions of the “rational male” against th…
We’re Still Good Guys”
Provincial and territorial correctional service workers
Canadian correctional workers (CWs) experience substantial challenges with mental health, but prevalence estimates have been limited across provincial and territorial services. Participating CWs from all 13 provincial and territorial services (n = 3740) self-selected to complete an online mental health and well-being survey assessing sociodemographic characteristics and symptoms of several mental disorders. Participants worked as correctional off…
Gendered violence and sexualized representations in video games
This research explored how gender portrayals in video games affect gender-related attitudes. Two hundred participants from the United Kingdom and Malaysia participated across three experiments, where the appearance and behaviour of video game characters were manipulated with regard to target (enemy) gender (Study 1), sexually explicit attire (Study 2) and level of character agency (Study 3). We found minimal evidence that exposure to gender-stere…
He sees patients as lesser people’
Drawing on 5090 English reviews of 486 psychiatrists working in Canada posted on ratemds.com, this study empirically analyses how Canadian mental health service users critique or appraise their doctors. I explore how the online realm serves as a conduit for resistance and discourses about mental health that otherwise become suppressed by psychiatric power in clinical settings. I found that when doctors did not listen to their patients, make caref…
‘Dirt, Death and Danger? I Don't Recall Any Adverse Reaction …’
Drawing on an ethnographic narrative written by one of the authors following his resignation from a hospital private security team in O ttawa, Canada and interview data gleaned from eight security men (all former colleagues), this article explores how hospital private security officers draw on discourses of masculinity to navigate the ‘dirty’ boundaries of their work, and to preserve their alpha‐guard statuses as controlled, autonomous and author…
You Gotta Kick Ass a Little Harder Than That
This qualitative research explores the complex and dynamic ways in which eight hospital security men engage in hegemonic masculine practices that subordinate the gender identities of security women and marginalized men. These intensive, in-depth interviews reveal that alpha male status is accomplished through routine demonstrations of physicality and dominance over mental health patients and subordinated guards who present a feminine or queer gen…
It’s for their own good”
Based on eight in-depth interviews conducted with security guards who work in the psychiatric units of two hospitals located in Ottawa, Canada, this research found that private security agents unknowingly draw on Sykes and Matza’s five techniques of neutralization to justify their use of violence and coercive force against patients and to overcome their feelings of guilt for participating in the administration of brutal intervention practices, in…
Men can change
Some male interviewees encounter difficulties when they try to express their emotions and overcome anti-feminist positions that transform the research setting into places where hyper-masculinities are reproduced. This research finds that critical dialogue is a persuasive tool interviewers can employ to challenge their participants to empathize with perspectives that contest and confront gendered violence, institutional coercion, and misogyny. Dra…
The criminal justice system on trial
Drawing on an affective framework, this qualitative content analysis of the immediate public responses on Twitter in the hours following Jian Ghomeshi’s not guilty verdict (n = 3943 tweets) reveals two key discourses of public opinion. Twitter users depicted the criminal justice system (CJS) as having worked and/or failed, and these intensifying divisions were highly gendered. Members of the public pitted notions of the “rational male” against th…
We fight for all living things
This qualitative content analysis of online documents compiled from the North American Animal Liberation Front (ALF), Earth Liberation Kollective (ELK) and Grassroots Ontario Animal Liberation (GOAL) network websites and Facebook pages explores how activism within the Radical Animal Liberation Movement (RALM) intersects with other social movements. While most literature to date traces the RALM’s (dis)junctures with other forms of social justice a…
Dirty Work, Dirty Resistance
This qualitative content analysis of 723 anonymous reviews of 60 Canadian food service employers, posted on RateMyEmployer.ca, explores how digital spaces publically circulate precarious workers' resistances and management of occupational stigma. We introduce to literature on "dirty work" the concept of socioeconomic hygiene, which identifies a particular kind of social and moral order within which the positions of the subordinated are naturalize…
Flying through the Cuckoo’s Nest
In this article, we devote ourselves to the task of reconceptualizing agency in the public criminology movement. We develop an imaginative political framework to circumvent the relational tensions currently ensnaring public criminology discourse. Employing the psychoanalytic theory of Slavoj Žižek, we engage the public criminology literature and its agential-activist notion of political engagement to reveal three primary directives dismissive of …
Retail therapy
Retail work has a prominent place in the Canadian job market in an era of global capitalism and consumption. Despite spanning an astonishing array of industries, this work is most often low-paying, low-status and un-unionized, leaving workers vulnerable to exploitation and discrimination from their employers. This qualitative content analysis of 1454 anonymous reviews of 25 Canadian retail employers posted on RateMyEmployer.ca explores how inters…
He sees patients as lesser people’
Drawing on 5090 English reviews of 486 psychiatrists working in Canada posted on ratemds.com, this study empirically analyses how Canadian mental health service users critique or appraise their doctors. I explore how the online realm serves as a conduit for resistance and discourses about mental health that otherwise become suppressed by psychiatric power in clinical settings. I found that when doctors did not listen to their patients, make caref…
Get paid, get out’
This qualitative content analysis of 503 anonymous online reviews of 52 Canadian call centres posted on RateMyEmployer.ca explores how forms of resistance, alienation and emotional labour are expressed outside of the workplace. Our study finds that digital publics are producing emotive insurgencies and networks of support within marginalised communities that undermine employers’ attempts at deadening the workforce. The reviews exemplify worker aw…
Stories of Madness
Old and present mental health systems tend to emphasize mental health service users as passive recipients of psychiatric care, which suppresses the idea that people who experience serious mental illness are able to comprehend their own sickness and recovery and therefore engage psychiatric experts about their care. This dissertation seriously interrogates the ways in which those who experience serious mental illness become agential, resist some o…
When Madness Meets Madness
Insider-outsider relations in qualitative research have been heavily studied. Yet there is a dearth in the literature exploring how people who have experienced madness produce knowledge and overcome trying circumstances when they do qualitative mental health research with other survivors. This article fills this gap through a critical reflection on my experiences with psychosis and involuntary hospitalization and how they shaped dialogue with my …
‘Until every cage is empty’
The Radical Animal Liberation Movement (RALM) in North America, including the notorious Animal Liberation Front (ALF) of Canada and the United States and the Frente de Liberación Animal (FLA) in Mexico, is a direct action-focused movement which has been condemned and heavily repressed by media, legislators, and animal industry lobbyists. The question of whether the criminalization of RALM activists is justified or not has been the source of livel…
Through Madness and Back Again
This article traces my struggles with psychosis, arrest, psychiatric institutionalization, and recovery. Mobilizing a cathartic approach to autoethnography, I reveal my resistances, resiliencies, oppressions, nightmares, and recovery processes in the mental health system as I became entangled in another, darker reality and tried desperately to escape it. This work is a contribution to the emerging field of Mad Studies that seeks to privilege live…
Suffering in Silence
In the course of their duties, correctional employees face exposure to a variety of potentially psychologically traumatic events (PPTEs). Recent research points to an array of consequences of work experiences on the psychological well-being of correctional staff, including the development of mental health disorders such as posttraumatic stress disorder, general anxiety disorder, and major depressive disorder. Drawing on an open-ended survey respo…
Improving the Mental Health of Correctional Workers
Researchers illuminate the mental health plight of correctional workers by demonstrating a high prevalence of mental health disorders among the group. Yet, structural barriers persist in preventing correctional staff from accessing treatment and support—barriers that may result in more prolonged and pronounced symptoms. We consider correctional staff perspectives on how mental health policies at the organizational level can foster better well-bei…
It Is Difficult to Always Be an Antagonist”
Nurses are exposed to PPTEs at work, but little is known about factors that can aggravate PPTE exposure in the field, impact the mental wellness of nurses, and even shape patient care. We discuss the implications of PPTE involving moral, professional, and ethical dilemmas (i.e., potentially morally injurious events), and provide recommendations for nursing policy and practice
Invisible ghosts of care and penality
Much correctional work is generally misunderstood by the mainstream media and many public circles as solely punitive and authoritative, which has fueled many politicized outcomes for correctional policy, practice and intervention. Reasonably, critical criminological discourse is steered primarily by the perspectives and voices of prisoners and victims. Yet this privileging leaves many questions remaining about how correctional workers in the cont…
Gendered violence and sexualized representations in video games
This research explored how gender portrayals in video games affect gender-related attitudes. Two hundred participants from the United Kingdom and Malaysia participated across three experiments, where the appearance and behaviour of video game characters were manipulated with regard to target (enemy) gender (Study 1), sexually explicit attire (Study 2) and level of character agency (Study 3). We found minimal evidence that exposure to gender-stere…
Fight or flight? Exploring suicide thoughts, experiences, and behaviours among correctional workers and their interventions of agency
Research indicates that, relative to the general public and most other types of public safety personnel, correctional workers are more likely to engage in suicide ideation, planning, and attempts. Yet, less is known about lived experiences towards, of, and beyond suicidality among correctional staff. To contribute to this gap in knowledge, the current study draws on qualitative, open-ended survey response data (n = 94) to explore how Canadian pro…
“We shouldn't encourage drug use”
The Prison Needle Exchange Program (PNEP) is a harm reduction initiative which involves providing people who are incarcerated (PWAI) with sterile injection equipment to avoid harms associated with unsterilized needle use, such as the spread of infectious diseases. While current evidence strongly supports the implementation and monitoring of PNEP, the program's success requires institutional support along with staff and prisoner commitment. The cu…
Patient Resistance to Psychiatric Discourse and Power
Drawing on 5090 English reviews of 486 psychiatrists working in Canada posted on ratemds.com, this study explores how mental health service users refuse to become subjectivized by psychiatric discourse and power. We interrogate how digital mediums provide mental health service users with a community of critique to regain control over settings where there are many power imbalances. We argue that websites like ratemds.com act as a digital agora in …
“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…
Assessing Road to Mental Readiness (R2MR) training among correctional workers in Canada
Psychology (31 works) · Political science (28 works) · Sociology (23 works) · Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis (20 works) · Criminology (16 works) · Law (15 works) · Mental health (15 works) · Medicine (14 works) · Social Psychology (13 works) · Psychiatry (12 works)