Nuanced. - 9. Dr. Zina Lee: Criminologist & Professor

Episode Date: August 19, 2020

Zina Lee is the Director of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of the Fraser Valley. Dr. Lee also acts as a professor and offers courses on Psychological Explanations of Criminal and Deviant Behaviour and Quantitative Research Techniques. Dr. Lee completed her graduate degrees in law and forensic psychology, and a postdoctoral fellowship in clinical child psychology.In this interview, Dr. Lee and I discuss the importance of research skills,critical thinking, and writing. We also discuss criminology, criminal minds, the courses she offers, defunding the police and much more!Connect with Zina Lee on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/zina-lee-b3763a18b/Find Dr. Lee at the University of the Fraser Valley:https://www.ufv.ca/criminology/faculty-staff/lee-zina.htmFind the podcast on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/company/bigger-than-me-podcastCheck out our website:https://biggerthanmepodcast.buzzsprout.com/Join our Facebook Community:https://www.facebook.com/groups/3089667531069809Find us on Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/biggerthanmepodcast/Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/user?u=35374462&fan_landing=true)Send us a textSupport the shownuancedmedia.ca

Hello, friends, and thank you for listening. My guest today is the Director of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of the Fraser Valley. She attained her PhD and master's degree from Simon Fraser University. She focused on law and forensic psychology. She also completed her postdoctoral fellowship in clinical child psychology. I have taken two courses with her at UF.E. She was by far one of the greatest professors I had. In this conversation, we define what real research looks like.

We discuss psychology of the criminal mind, education, critical thinking, news, policing, and so much more. Please give it up for my guest, Dr. Zena Lee. And we're live. Zina Lee, the director of criminology and criminal justice at the University of the Fraser Valley. please give us a brief introduction. Okay, well, thanks for having me, Erin. So in terms of a background, I guess I can give you a little bit. I am originally from sort of the lower mainland. I did my undergraduate degree in psychology at the University of British Columbia. And then I went on to SFU and did my master's and my PhD in forensic psychology, so in the psychology and law stream. And I then, after that, I went ahead and spent two years down in the U.S. doing a postdoctorate in clinical child. psychology and then came back up here to teach. Wow, that is amazing. It's a lot of years of school. Yes, could we get into that to start with maybe? Okay. You mean just in terms of like... Each experience, each part you went through? Yeah, you know what? I think that I was probably

really fortunate to have some great professors and I was probably interestingly, I was laser being focused on going to law school when I was in undergrad and I just didn't do that. I ended up taking a class in forensic psychology liking it and doing, then started just volunteering in a lab and getting used to sort of research and sort of projects and then just changed course and sort of pivoted and ended up going to grad school. So it wasn't my original sort of plan. It worked out well for me. I think I liked it. I probably have dreams that if I could do it all over again. I would certainly probably go to law school. I think that that would be an interesting sort of experience in that education, especially in light of everything that's going on.

But yeah, and then when I got to grad school, again, I feel like I was so fortunate and so lucky to have just some great researchers and scholars and just being exposed to all of that. And not just on the forensic side, but just sort of broadly in psychology and then sort of doing that. And so I feel really lucky that I just have been able to be educated by just people who really know and love what they do. Yeah, that's awesome. Could you tell us a bit about what you learned? Because I think the field that you're knowledgeable in is something that we're all really passionate about. I think a lot of people, I think, obviously, go into psychology because they say, like, I really am interested in human behavior. And that's part of it. I think that it's really trying to understand people, probably. And I think in this day and age, it comes just with everything, it becomes so much more relevant. I think I was really interested in the sort of forensic side of things. I think psychology is really, really broad. And I think that maybe what people sort of forget is there's sort of very, not niche areas. areas, but just sort of your typical streams that people don't sort of think about. Like, there's sort of the cognitive psychology and, you know, biotechnology. And there's different areas that you can go into. But I think that I was just really interested in sort of the criminal,

the antisocial, the deviant sort of side of things. And I think happened to be really lucky that there was, you know, SFU was offering a program like that. I think at the time that I was going to school that wasn't, there weren't a lot of institutions that had sort of looking for or a legal psychology type of program. And so it's grown now, I think. And it was just, I felt sort of lucky to sort of been exposed to people who sort of had a good grounding in like both the legal side of things and then the psychology side of things and then bringing those two things together to address, you know, sort of things like prevention and education and intervention and all those kinds of things. Yeah. Let's get into it then. And let's talk a little bit more

about the details of what forensic psychology looks like? Yeah, so I think that a lot of times when people hear the word forensic, I think they think of like forensics in terms of like, you know, collecting evidence and DNA and that kind of thing. I mean, there's a part of that, certainly, that people study, but really, it's really broad. I think it's taking psychological principles, concepts, and applying those to try and explain criminal behavior or any social behavior, right, towards the goals of really sort of prevention and intervention. And I think that it's taking those basic principles of human behavior,

what we know, like just the basic sort of psychological principles that any sort of probably someone in introsyke at, you know, first year would take, expanding on those and applying those to people in a particular, in a legal context. And I think that commonly we always think about these things as, oh, I'm interested in offenders. And that's certainly one area that you can then go into. But people have used these principles to try and explain and assist people. victims, witnesses, people who might be at risk, right? It's just broadly legal principles. And it's really taking legal ideas and sort of the psychological aspects of human behavior and

bringing those together. Yeah. Yeah. And then so where do you go from there? You get the education going. Yes. And I think that, you know, I think the thing about grad school and that I think I want people to understand is I think really what grad school trains you for is research. And I, you know, think it's great. Those are great skills. And I think that you can take those in very sort of different directions, like doing like a traditional sort of academic, big university like UBC or SFU, which is great. But there are other areas that people go into, I think that people sort of don't think about you can take those skills, the research skills that you learn and apply them to, you know, the private sector. There's lots of areas that just do research from a private perspective.

But even things like evaluation or working in healthcare or doing those skills are transferable. And I think that I was always interested in that research side, right, and had that opportunity to work on great projects and learn a lot. But I also like the connection. And I think that when I always originally wanted to come back, you know, I didn't want to be away from BC. And so when I finished my postdoc, an opportunity obviously came up. And so I was able to teach at Quantlin for about a year and a year and a bit. And really found that it's that connection and that being able to educate future generations in terms of sort of people that might go into that field, not necessarily thinking that, you know, you're going to necessarily go off to law school or grad school or anything. But I really

think that education is important. Absolutely. I think that just being able to give people those tools and those skills to be able to think critically and to be able to look at information, digest it, sort of really understand it, and apply it is really what's important. I think that education has changed a lot. I think that what students probably should take out of it, has probably changed over the years. And I think being able to do that and then to see the change especially, I think we see a lot of, I see a lot of growth. It's just amazing to see when you come in right in first year, how you are. And then when you leave and when you graduate, the change that's happened is amazing. I absolutely agree. And I do think that that's something that the university

might not have done a good job of communicating to people because I know a lot of people who think they have research skills because they go on Google and they look at a bunch of different articles and they're all could be valid or invalid. But you're involved in the research side of things and that's a very different word to you than it is to the lay person who thinks that a Google search is research. Yeah. So could you tell us a little bit about what you're looking for because you'll look at research articles and they have a whole bunch of components like the methodology, the introduction? Could you walk us through what that looks like? Just to give people an idea, of how much more complex it is when you say you're researching in comparison to a layperson.

Yes, I think you're right. I think that that term gets used. And that's not to sort of downplay. I think people that do sort of the Google search app, but I think you hit on the key thing, which is knowing sort of what are your legitimate sources and what they aren't. And I think obviously people don't know this until you really get into post-secondary because in high school you're not doing this. You're not looking at journal articles, you know, written by professors or doctors or psychiatrists or anything like that. that. And so that really is, I think, the job of probably post-secondary to be able to sort of teach you. But I think that when we say research, I think, from a very sort of social sciences or science perspective, we're talking about peer-reviewed journal articles that are published in legitimate sources. And so they're not paid for. Like, I mean, I think that it can become sort of people to assume, oh, it's published in some sort of a journal that must mean it's past some sort of test. But I think there are varying degrees of what is legitimate and what is not. And unfortunately, there are journals out there that will just publish your work if you just simply pay them to publish your work. And those are not the kinds of articles that we want our students for reading. It is really about peer-reviewed academic journal articles and really the basis I think of

social science of the sciences is talking about sort of that scientific method, which is, you're right. Like there is sort of a rationale or a background for why they did a particular study. They lay out their methodology, meaning who did they speak to or who did they interview or survey. Or maybe it might not be people. It could be newspaper articles or files or records or those kinds of things. And those things are all clearly laid out. And there is, it's a transparent process. So people have explained how they're analyzing the information and they're making those decisions ahead of time. Not after, you know, they collect their information and sort of cherry-picking what it is that they want to report or that they're hoping to find. And sort of reporting those in

an objective, unbiased, sort of here's all the information. And I think the harder part is then taking that information and then applying it, right, to behavior. Because we all know, I mean, listen, there's no such thing as the perfect study. And I think replication is always great. That's so important being able to sort of replicate and see if what you find in sort of one region or one area at one time point is that they're going to be the same in a different sort of context. But those are kinds of the sort of the things that we want to do is taking away is that when we talk about research or talking about years and years of being able to understand what is that methodology and they're good methods and they're bad methods, right? There are ways that you can get the results

to confirm really what your own sort of personal or political or whatever that is perspective is, but hopefully that gets weeded out through sort of that peer review process and then And once that's published, that's sort of considered the gold standard for what we consider to be research. Exactly. And then they start to replicate it. And then you start to be able to have more understanding of whether or not this is occurring across Canada or across the world and have more of an understanding of what's really going on.

Exactly. Yes. Awesome. So I think the other part that's important to understand is when we're in university, especially for me, it was tough doing the research because that's to everybody the most boring part. That is the least enjoyable part is checking to make sure that there is a very important. valid methodology in those steps. But that's almost the most important part of university is being able to understand good sources, bad sources. Yes, I think that with the sort of creation of the

internet, which I think was great, right? Information free at your fingertips. I think that's wonderful. It is helpful for people who sort of, you know, traditionally maybe can't go down a particular path. But I think what the skills that we really need, and I think, you know, I think that the high schools and the post-secondary institutions are starting to sort of realize that and make sure that that is a skill that's developed, is being able to figure out what is legitimate and what isn't. Because anybody can, you know, create a website. Anybody can take information post it. There isn't a vetting process, right, for going on to the intergenerator or creating a website. And so it's really that skill. And that gets better over time. I think that,

you know, hopefully you have someone that sort of can identify some of those kinds of things for you and to be able to help you along that way. But I think some of that is you write a trial and error process. But if it's just sort of, if you generally are naturally curious, I think, want to learn, question information. And I don't say question it in terms of you should never sort of assume that anything that's out there is bad or wrong. But just thinking about the kinds of statements that people are making or the arguments that they're making. Is it logical? Does it sort of make sense?

Is it consistent with other things that you've read and other things that people are reporting? I think that at least that's a good first step that people can sort of start to think, okay, well, maybe I can try an approach to research that way. And, you know, you can sort of think about how you might use that information or does that make sense? I think that the nice also thing about the internet is when people publish or say things or post things online that clearly or false have no backing, I think that those things come to light sort of fairly quickly too as well. So you can't hide certainly behind, you know, okay, necessarily your position or authority anymore. I think it really is about where's the evidence to sort of back that up.

Exactly. And I think that professors have a really good idea of that. And I hope that a lot of people graduating have the same idea. But it is something that's missing from the community, which is an ability to look at something and start to ask very specific questions about the information they're receiving. And so I'm grateful to have you on to be able to talk about these things. But let's start from the beginning, because you catch students entering the university field right out of the gate with psychology and the criminal mind. Could you tell us a little bit about what that looks like? So that particular course, I really like it. I think it takes sort of those psychological principles and just sort of gets people an introduction into sort of how you might use some of those theories and principles to explain human behavior and sort of, you know, antisocial behavior. I think what's nice always about some of those really first-year foundation courses,

we have is it really is it's that sort of you know you know put your foot in the water test it out sort of see how you like it and I think that what's always really great about those courses is we have so many great instructors that are just able to take that and bridge that with some of the things that you're actually seeing sort of out there to make that sort of relevant and recent you know with either case histories that are happening or things that you're just seeing every day out there that you read about like that media reports it really is I think I always feel like first year should really be about setting a good foundation, right? So you don't want to overwhelm students too much. But you certainly want them to leave with a good grounding in sort of those

criminological ideas and those principles as well as those psychological ideas and principles and how those two things interact together. So I think it's first year is always really, really broad. I think that it's great. I think it's great when students are like, oh, I learned a lot. I always think that first year is sort of like that tip of the iceberg, right? You just touch the surface and sort of you can make it past first year, stick it out, right, and finish your degree. It'll just, the other courses, like in second year, third, your fourth year, will sort of build upon that foundation that you've gotten to be able to get you to that place to think much more critically. I know that a lot of people say, oh, you know, first year's more about sort of

memorizing and doing all of that. And it is true. I think that there's certain things just in the social sciences. You have to just know. And part of it is just a straight memorization, because if you don't sort of have that foundation, it can be that much more difficult then to develop those critical thinking skills and be flexible and be sort of adaptable. Right. I absolutely agree. And I think one of the interesting things I see is people saying, well, I don't want to go to university because I don't want to commit to a criminology degree or an English degree or something like that. But that's such an interesting thing to hear now that I've gone through it. Because at any point in time, you can start to gear yourself in another direction. Even in first year, even in

your first semester, you can say, this course didn't work for me. It was way too hard or way outside my comfort zone. Yes. And you can start to move. And so what are your thoughts on that? I think that, you know, there's a lot, there's different people are different, right? And you have different goals when you go to post-secondary. I think that I was probably the type of person who was sort of layers were being focused. I knew I wanted a sake degree. I wanted in this particular area. I tried to take as many criminology type of courses because, you know, I thought, oh, I'm going to go to law school, and so that would be helpful. And other people are just like, you know what? I don't really know what area I'm interested in. But that is then that first year opportunity.

I think there's so much, so many different disciplines. And I think that people shouldn't always look at it as even if, you know, you take a course and you're like, oh, I didn't get that much out of it, or I didn't think that that was what I wanted out of it. Sometimes you may not know the benefits of what you've taken or what you've learned, and that might not happen for three years down the road, maybe 10 years down the road or something like that. I think certainly growing up, I had, you know, courses that I took either in high school or in university, they're like, I'm not quite sure why I'm, you know, I'm taking it because my program plan says I have to take it, right? But I think that you don't really realize it's hard to know what you don't know. And I think that sometimes those things you don't realize that it might have been a building block or some sort of piece to get you to think in a different way. And I think that if you always sort of go in with that mindset, I think that you'll have a much more positive experience. And you can change direction. I don't think that post-secondary nowadays, yes, you've got to declare a major at some point and sort of figure that out. But there's also some value to just taking a more general degree because, you know,

in the end, really the goal of any sort of undergraduate degree is to have you come out being able to think critically to be able to work with numbers, to be able to sort of see the big picture, and those skills are transferable regardless of, you know, what particular major you might do. I think that, you know, I and many others gravitated towards a particular area because those, that was the thing that drew our attention. We liked those kinds of things. It doesn't mean that that's necessarily the right fit. But I think that if you sort of think about it, okay, if it doesn't work for me, it's not the end of the world. Try out sort of something else. And eventually I've heard of stories like students didn't necessarily know, but eventually found their way. And part of finding

your way, though, is being exposed to so much more, right? I think that the thing about majors is while it gives you a really good grounding in that field and a foundation in that field, there is nothing wrong with being sort of interdisciplinar. I think that some of the, probably the people who are probably the best thinkers, right, have that ability just to take those bits and pieces from different, make, find those connections, because there are connections. I think sometimes are just not particularly obvious. And figuring out what those connections are, I think you become a much more well-rounded student taking a broad sort of cross-section of courses. And I think that overall that will help you. That's not to say, of course, you'll make some mistakes along the way,

and that's okay. I think it's okay. That is a time to make those mistakes. Absolutely. I think one important thing you just landed on was thinking critically, communication skills, these are things that I think everybody says they have. Everybody's a great communicator. Everybody's thinking critically all the time. And I don't think that that's the case. And you get to look over people's papers where they actually have to commit their ideas. And I didn't realize how important that is until you're outside of the university and you have people just giving you their thoughts, just giving you whatever things that popped into their head that day.

And there is no evaluating what they actually thought and going through and putting their ideas up against other ideas. there's none of that. It's just, well, I think this. And it's like, well, you're not correct. And I apologize, but there's like 50 reasons why that's not the case. And so could you walk us through how you define thinking critically what you're looking for? Oh, wow. It is, I think there's so many things to that, which I think might explain why it could become so hard, right, to sort of reach that, that really great ability to be able to do that and do that well. Just I think, obviously, this is a bias for me, having come from a social science field, right, is evidence-based. I really think that you can't think critically if you are unwilling to look at the evidence

and not just being able to identify the parts that support your argument, but also being able to consider the things that don't necessarily confirm how you feel or what you think. And trying to maybe explain that or account for that. I think that you're never going to get 100% agreement in any fields, right? There's always going to be sort of maybe your strange sort of theory that's sort of out there, but being open and being flexible to trying to understand that, at least to give that some thought and consideration, I think, is important. It's a part of being sort of a critical thinker. And being able to find the evidence, being able to do that research and sort of figure out where my position that I'm taking,

where's that coming from? Is that coming from personal experience? Is that coming from having read, you know, an academic book or journal article. Is that coming from the media? Where's that coming from? And looking at the legitimacy of those sources, I think is also important for critical thinking. And, you know, I'm going to hate saying this, but I think it is, part of it is being comfortable with numbers. I think that evidence typically comes in a quantitative way, which is how many people or what percentage of people feel this way or say this thing or, you know, what did we find. And so it is that ability to also be comfortable with numbers and be comfortable. with data and understanding it also being able to find when someone is trying to maybe fudge data

or present information the way that it isn't. I think those are just some key things in being sort of a real critical thing. There's always questioning yourself and always just thinking through, stopping and thinking before sort of maybe taking a position. Exactly. I think the numbers one is a big one and it's a weird time right now where numbers aren't that popular. data and we're doing this because all the data says that we need to do this isn't isn't the argument that people are looking to hear right now it's hearing anecdotal evidence it's hearing one person had this one experience and therefore we should implement this idea and i think that that's something interesting to get your thoughts on because you're sitting at the desk you're

doing the research you're putting in the work and then you're seeing on the news perhaps a lot of well like tim had this happen so we're just going to implement this whole program to try and helped him. What is, what is that like to sit there and, and have to deal with those types of arguments? So I think there's a lot of factors that go into that. I think that, you know, we see sort of the pendulum swing. I think that while numbers, I know, it's a, you know, people call it a nice objective way to try and make decisions, which I think generally, for the most part, that is true. Numbers don't take into account feelings or emotions or people's experiences, and I think that is a criticism sometimes of numbers. And so then you sometimes see the

pendulum swing the other, which is say, well, we can't look at numbers because they don't tell you the story, which is why I think bridging the two, so we talk about sort of the quantitative, right, methods, which is the pure sort of numbers and then the qualitative methods, which we tend to think of as trying to really get the in-depth details about a particular person's story. If you can bridge those two together, I think there's some great examples in the social sciences that have been able to do that. And I think the reason that sometimes we don't want to look at numbers is, you know, if they don't confirm, or we're just uncomfortable with numbers. I think that people have a lot of just general anxiety about math and general anxiety about numbers that

it's not something that they really want to touch on. Or maybe they feel, maybe it's sort of like a bit defensive, right? If it's something you don't understand and then someone presents you with that, You know, an easy probably just off the cuff argument is, well, that didn't happen to, you know, my friend or that didn't happen to my friend or my sister or my brother. So therefore, that argument is invalid. But that's not the way that the scientific method works. It's not the way the scientific process works. But it's an easy sort of dismissal in it. Part of that might just be from an uncomfortableness with numbers and not understanding, right? And I think that lots of people do a really good job, though, in the media of trying to, you know, I think they take visuals, right, to sort of try and communicate what that is. And I think that does obviously sort of a better job of hopefully making people less fearful of numbers. But I think unfortunately sometimes there are just some certain decisions. I think when policies and practices are devised that are based off of sort of anecdotes that, and I'm going to qualify this by saying anecdotes that don't represent generally what most people think or feel or behave, you could end up doing more damage, right? And so I think that's why

it really is important. I think that you do need to take those stories, and it helps to put a face and a story to what that number is. And I think that there are good examples of scientists that have been able to do that. And so hopefully, you know, eventually at some point, people will be able to sort of bring those two together across a variety of different disciplines. And so over time, then people become maybe less afraid of numbers or less, you know. I mean, it's hard when you see things in the media, when you have maybe someone with a particular authority that discounts numbers, of course, it becomes really difficult to then push back sort of against that. But I think what, you know, good scientists, good social scientists have sort of maybe that is

helpful for them is just that ability to sort of play the long game, I think, as well. Science, that think those things evolve, methodologies evolve and things get better. That over time, hopefully, we can really arrive at whatever the truth is. And that whatever was said five years ago, that was just sort of, maybe sort of wild or an accusation or whatever just eventually comes to like that, you know, probably wasn't truthful. I think that that over time, I think science has the ability to be able to sort of weed that out. Yeah, I think the numbers one is such an interesting one because we learn about math and all of those number problems at a very young age when almost none of the person's focus is on those types of problems. When you're going to math in grade 10, 11, even 12, it's like, that's, I'm glad you went, I'm glad you attended, even though you got maybe a C-minus, but that doesn't reflect your ability

to understand math, grapple with math, and it's really time after you're done in school to see if that's something you like to fix within yourself, because it's not about everyone needs to know math, it's like for yourself, when you go to the grocery store, you shouldn't be intimidated by trying to buy all your products and then saying, well, I only have a $100 for groceries reason. I have no idea if those types of things need to be weeded out for the person in their own life because there's so many people everywhere who say, I'm not a math person. And it's like, well, you learned math in grade 11. That is not like representative of your life and your ability to grapple with this topic. Yes. Yeah. No. And I think, you know, like you said, I think lots of people,

I grew up. I had math anxiety too. And so, you know, had you asked me in grad school, oh, would you ever be teaching a statistics class? I would have said, no, no way is that ever happening. And here I am doing it. I think, yes, I mean, certainly those experiences when you're in high school don't necessarily reflect. I think that also what we forget is we do for the long game. And a lot of things that you're doing when you're young are those foundational pieces, those sort of building blocks. And in that moment, we probably don't know how this may be relevant. But I think that what I've learned is if you can sort of stick it through, figure out that, you know, you can make it through. You can do this.

if you just sort of take it step by step, it will be sort of that foundation for those bigger skills, right? I think it's so funny. I always, I now sort of try to make an analogy between sort of numbers and sort of reading. Nobody, I think, questions that it's important to learn how to read.

Like, you know, to be able to identify what a letter is, put those sounds together, right, doing all those kinds of things. We don't question that. But somehow it's okay to be like, oh, well, if I'm not comfortable with numbers, that's okay. And I certainly want people thinking that those two things are equally important.

And, you know, if you think about sort of how you learn to read, we don't know why we have to identify the letters when you're little, how those sounds get put together. But those things build that foundation for being able to read more complicated information, right? And just set that foundation for things like the critical thinking skills. I think your experiences, I don't know, in elementary or high school doing simple multiplication or addition or subtraction. and then getting a little bit more difficult to doing sort of algebra geometry. We may not know. I know the joke is I don't know when I'm going to ever use geometry again, but it's that knowledge and that skill and that ability to be able to sort of manipulate those numbers.

That contributes, I think, to the broader skill of that ability to be a critical thinker, to be open-minded, to be able to communicate. I think that maybe the schools, or maybe we haven't done a good job of sort of trying to see that. And it is. it's hard to actually demonstrate that because I can't promise you that at the end of 13 weeks of having taken a statistics course, I mean, I hope you're better with numbers. You're probably not going to be at the level that, you know, someone who's gone to grad school

for years and years is at. But at least you're better and maybe you won't see that benefit until you get out. Like you said, out into the real world, as everyone calls it. And you have to be able to sort of communicate and think critically and do those kinds of, and people expect, you know, your employer expects that you have those skills. Maybe you're not going to sort of really see the end results of that until sort of so many years later. And so I just think if people can sort of remember that and think, I may not see it for a year, even six months down the road, but maybe five years from now, maybe it's, it might

be longer for some people 10 years from now. I hope that maybe they can go back and think maybe that experience or whatever that was, is what's contributed to it. Yeah, it's almost like they need to have faith. It's almost like they need to go into it with a little bit of, okay, I don't know why I need to know this, but maybe I do, and maybe it is worth the time. And I like your analogy to reading, because we all do agree that we should know how to read and write. And that brings me to a topic that I've been thinking a lot about, which is, what are we supposed to know as people? And I don't think we're having that conversation of like, what are the baseline expectations of a person operating in 2020

because I recently learned that breathing through your nose is super important. It actually changes the shape of your face if you stop breathing through your nose. I didn't know that. It blew my mind, and there's so many things that we don't. Mark was just on, and he talked about how Mount Baker is an active volcano. Didn't know that.

Didn't think about that. So what are we supposed to know? And I think math is one of those basics that we need to stop saying we don't know and we're not a math person because it's important. Yeah, I think, you know what? I mean, nobody's got a crystal ball.

I wish I did. I think certainly, though, we're at a turning point, and I think that's really been brought to light, probably with the whole pandemic. But even before that, I would argue that, you know, you started to see those things, but maybe people really didn't understand why I needed to know numbers

because, oh, it doesn't really affect me, or they didn't care. So I think some of those big data scandals that you've heard about, like Facebook and manipulating data or like big companies, you know, really one of those, I think, 21st century skills is being able to look at big data because that really is what companies are using in this sort of day and age.

And that is probably the way that is, I don't want to say this, they're a golden ticket, but it is something, I mean, with social media, with the internet and people just sort of putting information out there, your information, your data, if you want to think about it that way, your numbers, whatever those numbers might be, are really unique to you. Those are really the few things that sort of you own. And maybe we don't realize we're necessarily giving that information away when sort of, you know, you sign up for something in companies or collecting that information. But that really is where people are using that, those basic sort of scientific and trying to drive, you know, ads or trying to drive consumer behavior. And I think those are, you know, hopefully the big data scandals I think maybe might have, you know, turned people's, open people's eyes to starting to think about why it is important to look at numbers. And that is. It's just, I think, we see that in grad school now, a lot of just looking at being able to manipulate big data and just understanding this sort of the big picture. Hopefully that is opening people's eyes to why it is important. And I also think just even within the pandemic and seeing sort of how things have played out.

And we have this novel virus that people don't know anything about, but we're using basic principles of science to try and sort of figure out what the best course of action is. And those are things where these are numbers, right? Dr. Bonnie Henry is always at where she's talking about. number of new cases, but it's not just that. I think that the person who has those good critical thinking skills is also looking at how much more sophisticated they are in trying to report those things. We're not just interested in, let's say, number of new cases or a number of people who've been infected. You're interested in how many hospitalizations there are, how many people are dying, right? All of those little bits and pieces of numbers are coming together to give you a much bigger picture of the impact of what is going on as a result of the pandemic. And I think that

hopefully this experience is maybe opening people's eyes to be figuring out I do need to understand numbers I do need to I'm not saying you have to understand it you know at a level like a physicist or like a mathematician understands it but at least being able to be comfortable to when you see something being able to evaluate what that actually means the number is actually just a symbol right for some other behavior so what is the behavior that you're trying to explain and people I think if you maybe think about it that way, I wonder if people would be, you know, more open or less afraid of looking at numbers. Well, and I think that that's a good example to show how people respond because you'll get people who will say, well, that number isn't representative because

people who get the coronavirus and stay home aren't represented in the data set so the data set isn't valid. And it's like, you're right that that is a flaw within the data set, but that doesn't mean the whole data set is invalid and that we can't do anything with the information. And I think that that's where those individuals who may have like a very slim understanding of the information jump on it and then start protesting something because that is their understanding is that the information wasn't done perfectly, therefore we shouldn't rely on it at all. Yeah. And I also think that people forget that numbers don't exist in a vacuum. There's a context, right? And so you're right.

When you do see numbers, right, it's good to question, are we talking, is that a particular region in BC? Are we talking about all of BC? or is a particular city is a particular area because those numbers are going to change but if you don't sort of have or are unwilling to consider those other factors those other environmental factors you probably aren't going to interpret

those numbers correctly and I think that we do have to remember numbers those numbers do and that those statistics that information doesn't exist in a vacuum and so being able to understand what might be driving some of that is sort of a good way to start maybe getting yourself into thinking sort of critically, and you're right, don't just discount something, you know, because maybe there might be one flaw. Obviously, the more flaws and the more holes that

you find in a particular either data set or particular study or methodology, that is going to probably make you discount that particular information, but don't, you know, take one sort of bit and just discount the whole thing. I think that, you know, you can make some, sometimes really horrible decisions, right, as a result of just taking the wrong path and sort of discounting something without looking at the big picture. Absolutely. I think a good example of it being done right was how they handled the coronavirus in terms of regions. They didn't break it down by municipality or community, which so a lot of people were like, well, are there cases in Chilliwack? Are there cases in Abbots? We don't know because they broke it down by like Fraser Health

and Vancouver Health. And they broke it down in a way that didn't give us enough information to decide, well, I'm in Chilawak, I'm safe. There's only one case in Chilawak, so I'm fine. They didn't break it down that way. They broke it down very uniquely in a way, I think, did help curve the pandemic and curve cases because people were unsure and they weren't confident in going to certain locations. I think Colonna had a bit of a spike because their whole region was low in numbers, but overall, we had lower cases because our understanding was different than knowing whether or not Chilawak had all the cases and Abbotsford had none.

So I think that's super important, but I also, I really want to get into the first year course that you teach and just talk a little bit about the details of what a student learns and what they're going through because one of the interesting parts about it is it's right within the niche of everybody's interest right now. Criminal minds, there's Breaking Bad, there's so many shows that kind of overlap with your course and with the psychology of the offender, the psychology of the people committing the crimes and what are they going through? So could you give us a little bit of an idea of what that course looks like in terms of what you ask students to do? Sure. I think that really you don't want

to overwhelm students in the first year. I think I feel like my job is to really hit at the big sort of key psychological concepts and principles. Not necessarily, even the ones that, you know, I don't necessarily put a lot of faith in, but there are big sort of key areas in psychology, so things like learning theories or psychoanalytic theories, right, or developmental theories. Those are just, you know, biological theories. Those are really sort of the building blocks of all of psychology. And getting students to understand each one of those areas and also what are the similarities and what are the differences across those areas and how multiple different theories or principles can all be used to explain a particular behavior or a particular, you know,

thought process that someone's having or a particular disorder. And so it's trying to figure out then which of these theories applies and why, hopefully giving them a sense of then how, you know, we sort of break things down, you know, criminology is very interdisciplinary. And so you've got sort of psychology. But then there's also sociology. And then there's sort of the straight sort of legal areas, you know, and even within those areas, things are even broken down, right? Like within sociology, like even within sociology, there's, it's very much sort of environmental, but then you have sort of critical criminology and all of those kinds of things. It really is about, do you understand what are the basic psychological principles? And can you use that information to try and

explain, let's say, why someone habitually commits crime? Or why is it someone, you know, you might try to explain differences between people. People can come from two very, very similar backgrounds, don't necessarily turn out the same way. And so why is that? Is that partly psychology? Is it partly the environment. And so in psychology, we try and sort of give, we do focus in on obviously the individual person, sort of their upbringing, their background, their thoughts, their sort of feelings, their sort of risk factors. But again, I think that it's a disservice to assume that that is the only driving force. I think, again, we interact with people. We live in a particular environment, in a particular cultural, in a particular political time. And those things will all

interact together. And so once you get a really good understanding, I think, of sort of psychology and the individual person, but then also getting a good grounding in environmental issues and sort of situational factors, you can bring those together to then try and explain why is it that someone may be behaving in a particular way? Obviously, with the goal of, you know, if they're going down an antisocial path, you want to be able to correct that. Absolutely. Could you tell us a little bit about antisocial behavior and the project you have students do, because that was incredibly eye-opening for me to go through and learn about certain types of people. Yes. So I think that we have, you know, many of us do this assignment, particularly in this

course, and I think it's not just at UFE, but at other institutions as well. Really, that sort of capstone sort of term paper at the end is, you know, we have you pick an offender, right? Many of these are sort of well-known offenders that have been written about, people have studied them and so there's a lot of information about sort of their background and their history and they're growing up. And we ask, I ask our students to pick from all the theories that you've learned, right, because there's so many of them in psychology, which one of these best explains why this person committed the types of crimes that they did. And it isn't about, you know, trying to find that right theory. I don't think there's such a thing as a right theory. But again, part of it is,

do you understand, you know, it's your ability to then demonstrate to me. Do you understand all the various theories that are out there that you've considered them. This is the one that you've narrowed down. And also start to then show your critical thinking skills, show your application skills, is can I take these basic principles of psychology and use those to explain why, let's say, Ted Bundy, tortured, you know, sexually assaulted and murdered so many young women. And so it is really, I mean, I think, you know, the bad thing about that is having, you have to have a bit of a stomach, obviously, for reading about their crimes and the sort of backgrounds and many of them have horrific backgrounds and being able to sort of apply that to an individual person.

I think sometimes we forget that. We forget that in the numbers, at the end of the day, in any field, it doesn't matter if it's criminology or legal or psychology or sociology. You have to make a decision about a person. And so it is taking all of that information and figuring out, okay, is this the thing that best explains who this person is and why they came to be. Absolutely. And I think that that's so important for people to have to face the reality. It's, it is hard to swallow, but I think it's so valuable to have to go through that and have to look at kind of the worst people, because we're all at risk of being those people under different conditions. And I think that that's one of the lessons criminology teaches is environment does play a factor. It's not the whole enchilada, but it plays a huge

factor in how you develop. And people like John Wayne Gacy had a very troubled background, and that's not excusing his behavior, but it's understanding how do people get to be this way and are we creating conditions in anywhere in BC that we would be facilitating that type of person coming about. Of course. And I think that that's so useful. And it was so much fun to take that course and learn those things because you do get to take the criminal mind show and kind of more apply it and actually get an experience of what that's like. The other part I wanted to ask about is what is it like teaching that course in comparison to a higher level course. And you are a fantastic professor,

in my opinion, because you are able to explain the more abstract concepts to students at a very early age in their development. And I think that that's really valuable. And you're always willing to slow down and make sure people understand. Even through this podcast, I think that that's coming through. So can you explain where you got that from maybe? You know, I think I really do think I was very fortunate to have just some wonderful teachers and professors. I think there are certain things I think that, you know, we all have, I think, an idea of who, you know, at some point, who you are and what your identity is. And sometimes I think if you take some time to just sort of reflect back and think about your own life growing up, there are probably some key sort of pivotal moments for people. that some of the things that I remember, I think at the time probably, it was just a, didn't seem

like a particularly insightful comment or anything like that or a particularly, you know, groundbreaking activity. But looking back, I remembered certain things and certain activities and certain things that, you know, my teachers and my professors had us do sort of growing up. And I feel like it really did sort of contribute to that, you know, my development and just sort of overall. That is obviously our job as university professors to try and sort of take those abstract. concepts and try and communicate them in a way that people understand and they can relate to. And I think sometimes part of that ability to do that is when you've gone through that yourself. I think I can remember certain times where you just really didn't understand something and

you struggled with something so much. But it was trying to then figure out how then do I understand that? I mean, obviously there's different ways you can do that. You can reach out if you had a mentor that was great, who was willing to take the time to sort of sit there and think through those things. And I had those. But of course, I had people that maybe weren't so much like that. You know, we have some people that are approachable and some people that aren't. I actually don't think those experiences were bad. I think that they taught me also to be independent. And sometimes it means you need to take that initiative and be a little bit more independent and figure that out for yourself. And so I think I always try and sort of remember those things. And I also, I try and

remember especially, you know, a third year when I teach statistics, I think knowing and just recognizing people have a certain level of anxiety. And that's never good. I don't think anything, when you're so anxious about something, you are blocked from really being able to take in information. And so I think that what I do differently there is just really try and lower anxiety. At first, I think there's obviously differences in a lot of our faculty will talk about this. I think that at third year, we expect, you know, some people do it better than others, that you have come in with a little bit more sort of critical thinking skills and we're trying to sort of develop those so much more. And so we expect that you at least remember

or have some of those foundational pieces. Whereas first year, I think, you know, we expect it's a huge shift. I think particularly for students who, especially if you're coming straight out of high school and then coming into your first year university or your first generation going to post-secondary, those things will all matter. But I even for myself, remember, it was such a huge shift from high school to university. It was just a different mentality of what instructors expected of you and how you just had to be so much more independent that I think knowing that we do try and provide probably more sort of supports at first year to just get students feeling comfortable generally with post-secondary and how that's different, you know, than high school.

and making sure that we set you up on the right path. And so I think part of that is just recognizing you come in with a little bit less information maybe, sometimes wrong information, and you just need those, you know, better supports. And so if we can take that by, it's, it always is. I think I just had some good advice from people growing up about if you can just find a way, that connection is going to be different for different people. If you can find that thing, that one thing that is pique someone's interest and help them go down that road, I think that that is just overall is a good approach to teaching.

Absolutely. And I think it's interesting that you teach the later course because that is the course that, from my understanding, is the most anxiety-provoking course. I would have students who had already taken the course saying it's going to be the hardest course I'll ever take. And it was a breeze. But it was a breeze because you pay attention and you're prepared for the worst and you're listening to the professor actively trying to make sure that you're not missing anything. And I think I did fine and it was a really enjoyable course. And now looking back on it, it's one of the most

important courses in my mind. But at the time, before the course, I was like, that's the course I want to avoid. If there's a way I can graduate without it, that's what I would love. And now looking back on it, it's like, can you tell us just a little bit about the course so people have a better understanding of what the difference is. Yeah, so I get, I think when people hear of quantitative statistics obviously think, oh my gosh, like it's, you know, and it is. Of course, there's the numbers and the formulas and all of that. And I think that what, I take a different approach. I think that while I want you to understand, there's programs out there that will crunch the numbers for you and do all of that. And, but that's not the skill that I want students coming out of that course with.

I just want you to become familiar with sort of how researchers come to the conclusions that do because it's such an important part of the research process that if you don't understand that, I think you're putting yourself at a disadvantage. If you can at least sort of just try to read through the complicated sort of the math behind things, you are really taking at face value what someone's conclusions are. And I think that's where I don't want people to skip, you know, that information. And so while I, while of course there's the anxiety provoking parts of all the different formulas and all the different tests and all the different software programs that are being used. What I really want students, and this is what I always say, is it just, if you just follow

through those basic step by step, eventually it will all come together. I know you don't see it in that week when you're learning about one particular test. It's hard to see where am I going to use this. And like I said, you're probably not. You're likely are not going to, unless you go to grad school, unless you end up in a research type of position, I completely acknowledge that you may never use that one particular piece of information. But I'm hoping that what you're learning about, when do I use that particular test? And how is that different than this particular test? Or what is that number in the end, that number that I get that the program calculates for me? What does that actually mean? Does that say something about criminal behavior? Does that say something about these big

abstract constructs concepts like justice or racism or, you know, criminality or a risk factor. I think that hopefully that is really what I want students taken away. Not that I don't want you to come up saying, oh, I learned how to use this particular program. That's great. I think that's a tool. You have a tool that another skill set. But hopefully seeing I can make those connections and understand what the number represents and what that connection is to human behavior. That I think is really the ultimate goal. Yeah, fair enough. And I think

that that's something that needs to grow in our communities more, because I do think that it's something where we, for the most part, read things in the newspaper or whatever it is, and we have no idea how they got the number that they're telling us, and then we're relying on that number to move forward in the world. And I think that it's good to have you on so you can explain a little bit of the behind the scenes, the stuff people avoid when they're trying to go to university. So you're also the director now. Yes. So I think that that's a phenomenal opportunity.

And I'd love to hear about what that role looks like for you. Oh, you know what? I think it looks so much different now than I could imagine it did probably a year ago or five years ago when other people did it. I think I took over obviously right in the middle of a pandemic. So I think that things are still up in the air. I think that it's caused a lot of probably anxiety, I think, for students overall in general. And so it's recognizing what can I. I do. I'm only one person. I think that what I love about criminology at UFV is we do have faculty

and sort of that really, really view ourselves as family. I think that we are all interested in making sure that students get what they need, making things relevant, keeping that thing, you know, keeping things supportive, all of those kinds of things rigorous, relevant, sort of appropriate, changing when we need to, being adaptable. And so I think I would not have wanted to go into this position if I didn't feel like you had wonderful, like, colleagues and coworkers who were genuinely interested in helping students. And I think I see that position as, to me, it really is about helping students. And so obviously in a pandemic, I think that, you know, there are sort of challenges with that and trying to reduce students'

anxiety. We're all moving remote, you know, in the fall. And so it is trying to try, to serve students' needs. It's best as they can. Absolutely. And I think that it's fascinating to see you take on the role, and I've seen others be director, and it's just so interesting because I had no idea that it is a term position, and you take it on for a certain amount of time, and you're trying to accomplish what you want to accomplish during that time and help students. But that's so interesting. Let's get into the faculty part of things and talk a little bit about your coworkers and your colleagues and hear about what research they're doing or what's going on within criminology, because

A lot of people tease me about being criminology in the Fraser Valley because it's by far one of the most popular programs you can take. But there's a reason for that. And I think that the faculty there are one of the most significant reasons is because I was in the criminology room all the time. And there was always support, there was always someone to look over a paper, give you a better idea, give you better direction. So can you tell us a bit about the faculty so we have a better understanding of why criminology is the go-to? Yeah, I think, oh, it's a probably a combination of things. I think we do have, what I think makes us also a little bit unique, maybe from other criminology programs, is we do really very much try and have that balance between sort of

the academic and the applied. And so we have the criminology part, right, which is the study of crime and all of those kinds of things, but it's also the sort of applied part. And I think that what certainly what we keep being told over time is that a big draw is the two practicums. And so that ability to be able to take that information, what you're learning, Apply that, you know, also get your feet wet in terms of, is this really for me? And so that ability at second year to do a practicum and then at fourth year to be able to do a practicum to make those connections sort of with employers and to develop those skill sets, that knowledge sort of in an applied setting, I think really does draw students to the current program. I think probably maybe, you know, by a good, I don't know if it's an accident or we're obviously located, right, in an area that is surrounded by, you know, institutions. and prisons, and so those kinds of things.

But I also think that our faculty have done, we have a good mix of people who maybe sort of do more traditional, academic type of research and people that do applied research. And we've worked really hard, I think, to have relationships with policing, with corrections, with various social service agencies, you know, with the legal field, and being able to work collaboratively with them to do the kinds of projects that are meaningful for those agencies. So I think we have a center for public safety and

criminal justice research. And a lot of that research, those are collaborative projects that are between policing agencies and our faculty. And so I think that ability to, and you know, and then to bring students in, students get that experience to be able to apply research skills, to sort of see those kinds of things in that context. Those are just things. that you don't, I don't think you could, it's tough to get that, you know, everywhere that you go, but we at least, at least try to give those experiences at the second and fourth year to be able to do that. Absolutely. I remember how valuable my practicums were just in having to go out and meet people, do an interview and be a part of an organization for three months and

grapple with that. See the things you don't agree with. See the things you do agree with. Go to your professor. Talk about the things you don't agree with and really start to figure out where does theory end and reality begin because theory is way more valuable. I'm hoping to have Jonathan Hyde on soon to talk about it because when I was in it, I was like, this theory is nonsense. I don't need to know how crazy this theory that people think that the shape of heads can predict crime. Like that's nonsense. Why am I learning? This is waste. Like your mindset then is so different than now, which is somebody thought that at one point in time. That was considered good research at the time, and it's not good research now, but we don't have to go down that route anymore,

which is why we teach people about it, is somebody already tried this. It was a really bad idea, and we're not going to go back there. And so now you know not to go there anymore and not to think that that was a good idea. And so I do think that theory is valuable, and I see a lot of people leave university with the idea that theory was the worst part of their education. Do you have any thoughts on where people start to get that idea that theory was never useful? you know what I wonder if it is that divide and that sort of that sort of common phrase you could go well in theory right and then in practice right we sort of make that divide right and in some ways I've maybe been guilty of doing that too because we talk about oh there's the criminology part and the criminal justice part but I think that those two are certainly sort of relevant which is why we call ourselves a school of criminology and criminal justice I think it is I think that it's it's probably also that you you know, we have these stereotypes of what a theorist might be, you know, and it's someone who just, okay, they sit around, they think about things, but don't really go on tests, right?

Or we talk about the person that is all talk, but no action. And so I wonder if that stereotype comes from, again, also it could be the difficulty, right, of just being able to grapple with those ideas. And, you know, maybe some people do this better than others. I think John does a very good job of making it relevant is trying to find that connection. I mean, I would agree. I remember taking dense theory classes in undergrad and thinking, I can't believe someone actually thinks this or what the heck does this have anything to do with what is going on right now.

And, of course, there's good theories and there's bad theories. I think it's more, again, I would argue, if you can see the bigger picture of trying to work through, what is it, what are these principles, what is the foundation of this theory, to contribute to your understanding of, okay, well, then how can I explain? human behavior. What does that mean? Or how does that, what does that mean for my understanding of what's going on? I think that hopefully, again, that is something that people will get better with grappling, you know, over time. And I think John's a good example of taking that and just using examples. Like, I mean, you see it everywhere out there. I just think that people don't maybe necessarily make the

connection. And maybe sometimes, you know, we probably need to do a better job of making that overt connection between something, you know, theory from years and years ago and something that's going on right now in this world. Exactly. And I think that that's something that it's important for people to hear and start to think about where does the theory actually fit in? And just saying what doesn't fit in is probably not enough of an analysis to determine that. Yeah. Could we talk a little bit about some of the professors you work with, some of the research they're doing and just give us an idea of what's going on? Yeah. So there's a lot. I mean, obviously, you know, things slowed down a little bit with COVID and, you know, people had to adjust.

Our Center for Public Safety and Criminal Justice Research that Dr. Irwin Cohen is the director of is always, you know, there are a ton of projects going on. I think just off the top of my head I can think about they do things with, you know, gambling, like gambling addiction and the voluntary self-exclusion program and they're doing an evaluation of that. They commonly do sort of public safety surveys with various different regions, you know, working with police agencies to figure out what does the community think about the police? How is that relationship with the police? What needs to be improved? You know, what's working well. We have some, a few projects that I'm working on right now where we're looking at school liaison officers and their presence. You know,

what are those sort of models that people in different districts are using and what's working, what's not working. They have tons of projects looking at sort of prolific offenders, what different, again, what different attachments used in terms of their strategies. We have a number of, so Dr. Amanda McCormick does a number of research studies looking at domestic violence, intimate partner violence. Again, working with policing agencies to figure out what do, let's say, their members need to be able to make the correct sort of call or the correct judgment call when they arrive, you know, at a case or a file. So, yeah, I think also we have a number of people doing sort of evaluations. I think Yvonne Dandran, even though is an emeritus with the school, is still, you know, intimately connected and still sort of working at both an international level and also locally looking at various things like restorative justice practices, girls and sort of victimization, sort of human trafficking. Dr. Haley Miller does a number of sort of work in that area as well and sort of sort of legal ramifications of that. But yeah, we have, I think it's just, there's so many different things. And I think.

COVID hasn't really slowed those things down. It's just done that collaborative work in a very, very different way. All of those are so interesting, like, we have to get into all of those. But I think that that's one unique thing that people never think of when they think of going to university is that you could be involved in research on domestic violence and that somebody sitting at home watching a video on domestic violence and thinking, I'd like to get involved. Attending a university, starting to take the courses and starting to work with that professor is a great starting place to start to grapple with those problems. So let's start with the gambling one, because

I actually had to grapple with that a little bit in law school. And we were talking about the legal rights of somebody who writes their name and says that they don't want to attend the gambling. And then what is the casino's role in making sure that that person isn't allowed back into the casino once they've asked not to be accepted in? Could you tell us a little bit about what's going on there with the gambling? Yeah. So I think it was, that was a partnership again, the center with Amanda McCormick and Dr. Irwin Cohen and working with the British Columbia Lawyer Corporation. And so they've been doing this actually. It's not their first iteration. I mean, it's been going on for a number of years now where they are looking at specifically the voluntary

self-exclusion program and where people, like you said, sign up, they want to take a break, feel like they have an issue or something's going on. And so looking at, it's really an evaluation of that exclusion program, looking at the kinds of people they're signing up. How often are they sort of violating? What do they think about that particular program? And it is really working collaboratively with BCLC to sort of improve the program. What other measures do they think need to be in place? And so it is.

It's reaching out to people who have enrolled in the program, asking them how things are going, how long they've been on the program, whether or not they have been violating, you know, the conditions of that program, and just overall sort of their thoughts on that. And they've been doing that for a number of years now. I think that they're also sort of trying to get a sense of the different reasons, you know, that people are gambling, whether that might be sort of for excitement versus sort of they feel like it's a financial sort of need or a way to sort of get out of a situation and looking at how they can sort of improve on those kinds of programs that are being delivered in what way. Yeah, that's so interesting because we often think of gamblers struggling with that, but having a program that's able to address that. And then on top of that, having evaluation processes that try and make sure that the system's working is so interesting and something I don't think I ever read about in a newspaper or ever get the opportunity to really think about of how do we help these people. Yes, I think that is actually one of the things that our center does a lot of work on. And so, and you're right, I think that we probably don't even know and talk about it. I don't know. know how much, I certainly don't talk about it in the statistics course, but I think that is the

other piece is that we forget that we have lots of programs out there that are intended to do the best things, you know, and sometimes they do. I think they all genuinely come from a place of wanting to help people, and sometimes, you know, programs, some programs are developed better than others, science-based versus not, or anecdotally based. And the missing piece, I think, from a research perspective is it is important to evaluate those programs and to get a sense of what's actually working. I think that you will not know if something is actually doing what it's intended to do unless you do an actual objective evaluation and you go in there, you dig through all of that and are willing to accept the good, the bad and the ugly and figuring out what does

need to be improved. I think, you know, in certain sectors, I think that just from a purely financial perspective, I think that is the expectation. You're no longer going to get funded for a program if you can't show that it's doing what it's supposed to be doing. And we worry about that now. We see that now with, you know, the calls for defunding, you know, the police. But like, I mean, there's so many programs out there. And sometimes programs overlap. Maybe that's not the best approach. Of course, we hear it all the time, I think, among people who need programs that when they need them, weight lists are huge. It's really hard to find a program when you need it. And so that's really, evaluation can do all of that. It can try and figure out what does need to be done and how

do you then change or, you know, what else do you need to fund to be able to meet the needs of a particular community or a particular region. Absolutely. And I think that that's a conversation that needs to get more onto the front end of newspapers and stuff because we hear about like 15 million being given to X program and we're like, wow, that's a lot of money and maybe it'll fix the problem. And it's like, but we need to start to be able to as a society, because I do think we're smart enough. I don't think that intelligence is the problem. I think that it's having the information in easily accessible places, because I have to have you on the podcast to hear about gambling and those types of programs.

And so that's not being filtered through the newspaper in a way that's always clear and always easy to understand, how are they evaluating? What are they doing? Yeah. No, that's true. I think that, you know, it's interesting. I think that some media, oh, let's do it better than others. I think obviously we as social scientists have a responsibility to also put ourselves out there, right, and to get that information out there in a way that's digestible to the average person who doesn't have the PhD or the master's degree.

And so there is part of that. I think that certain news outlets, though, do that better than others. And I wonder if it's just people need to find, you know, where to go to be able to find that information. I think I always find it interesting in areas that I don't know anything about, like finance or business or something like. that. You can see those. I mean, clearly good researchers and scholars, people who are associated with post-secondary institutions are going out and communicating that information. Maybe just, maybe we just aren't looking for it, you know. But you're right. I think that I don't know if that means media reaching out to institutions more or maybe, you know, social scientists and professors reaching out more or a combination

of both, right, is to be able to do that. I think media wants that. But of course, they wanted in a digestible sort of sound bite type of format. Exactly. And I think that that's where we run into issues is because in your circumstance, you're acknowledging all the complexities of what's going on and you're recognizing that the program isn't going to do half as good as everyone would want it to do if they had the ability to, but certain programs just aren't geared. You're not going to be able to cure gambling addictions through one program. Like, it's just not that simple. And so that's not what people want to read is that it's a long, slow, difficult process. It's going to take years.

We're looking for the, we fixed it. Yes. Yeah. No. And I think that hopefully we'll come to a point where you could make those qualifiers, you know. I think that some people sort of do that better than others. And it is. There's no such thing as a perfect sort of cure all or band aid.

But it is, you know, again, it's just generally being a good sort of, I think, citizen and a person that sort of, of knowledgeable and wants to contribute to make things better. I think there's, you know, there's a responsibility on both parts, your individual responsibility to seek out that information and sort of understand all the complexities of that, but also the responsibility of experts to communicate that information and do it in a way that people can sort of just understand and be comfortable with. Absolutely. And I think there's another weird area where we're going to talk about domestic violence,

and I think it's a super important topic. But one of the things I think people run into is they know it's important and they recognize that it's an issue. But where do they go if they're not a university? Who do they talk to? How do they get the message out in a meaningful way and have complex dialogue on some of the background issues? There's not that opportunity the same way when you're researching it and you're discussing it and you're like, well, we could start this program that would be able to operate this way and help these people. there isn't that opportunity for them. So they kind of go, well, yeah, I know it's an issue all like put up purple lights, but how do I make the difference? How do I get informed? So could you tell us a little bit about the research and then we can talk about it more broadly? Yeah, this really is, I think, Dr. Man McCormick's sort of area. I think that it is, I think that's a good example of where sometimes we don't want to sort of talk about things. I would say, I mean, if I had to give a simple answer, I think certainly it's always so much more cheaper and just the outcomes are. so much better if you can proactively address things rather than having to obviously react to them.

You still need the reactive mechanism, unfortunately, because you're not going to catch, you know, people are going to fall through. The safety nets that we have in place aren't going to be able to catch everyone. But I think that, you know, and I hate to say, I know that, you know, it always falls on teachers. We want people to be educated. But it's also parents, too. I think that if you can sort of think about all the things that you can equip and, you know, your child with in terms of just general life skills or being sort of emotionally aware and it's we're not talking about knowledge I mean knowledge can be sort of developed over time and you can gain that as as you mature but just your ability to do basic things like just you know think about other people

recognize your own emotions being able to do all of those kinds of things if we can start kids off on the right path lots and lots of evidence that that putting them on the right path and proactively being able to do that will stop a whole host of we're not just talking about crime. We're talking about health issues, right? You know, education issues. All of those things we can prevent purely just from a good sort of healthy foundation. So I think that's really, really important. I think obviously we, you know, in criminology, we also try and fix sort of the reactive end because we know that certain things will happen. And I think that, you know, from a domestic violence perspective, I know that a lot of the work that Dr. McCormick is doing is looking at, you know, working with police agencies and also with social service agencies and let's say, transition houses and a very much a collaborative approach. I think that we're recognizing now from a lot of the research that while each agency or area is siloed and has their particular responsibility, so we know police have their particular responsibility, corrections, you know, and CSC has their particular responsibility. Judges and the courts have their specific responsibilities and mandates,

you have to work together. And I think there's a lot of models out there. We talk about sort of hub models where it's social service agencies, so there are police, corrections, experts, like people, even, you know, psychiatrists and social workers, teachers, those educators coming together in this collaborative model to try and address really the root cause of what is going on and to work together as like a wraparound type of service. I think, you know, there's certainly all the red tape that goes with that, you know, memorandums of understanding and confidential at all of that. But once you get over those hurdles, I think that that sort of approach generally will be sort of helpful for just addressing some of these really, really serious

issues that could have large-scale effects, not just on a particular person, right? But obviously for other generations, if people are caught up in that. Yeah, that's such an interesting one, because if you think about developing a human, and the goal is always to get them when they're young and reprogram all the information like we're a computer and that's really the best time because then you don't have the habits, then you don't have those experiences and we can really start fresh every new generation. And I think that that's important to say because a lot of people say, well, that child is like filled with potential. And it's like that's the potential that we're really talking about is that ability to move forward without the weights of like racist ideas, sexist ideas

and to really reframe because I don't have those personal viewpoints and I've grown up and I think my generation has grown up mostly without them and we take that for granted I think too often where we don't recognize that it was our parents and it was their grandparents' failures in certain areas that really woke us up to we can't continue those bad ideas anymore but I do think that we've gotten a bit arrogant with well it's just an automatic it's so clear why doesn't everybody else get it and it's like but we just got it like we're like one of the generations to really understand it and not have it be as much of a question. And I think that that's important that we start to accept those types of roles and understand our place

in history. I agree. I think that's one thing I think that maybe we don't, oh, none of us. I mean, all of us, I think, are probably take certain things for granted because it is difficult. It's hard to connect and understand, right? When you didn't go through a particular time that was rampant with, you know, huge sort of social upheaval or civil rights issues, we don't. And it's obviously very, very difficult to understand the struggles that someone had coming through to be able for you to have the rights and those abilities and those opportunities that you do, it is. And so I think that is something that I think we, it's important to just look back,

not to dwell on, you know, problematic points in history, but to remember, obviously, you don't want to repeat anything that's anything atrocious from the past. And I think that is, you're right. I think what we forget is we didn't experience that. It's hard to understand that. But it is important to remember and to acknowledge that towards just at least bridging that understanding of why is it that there are certain segments or certain groups where don't understand why you think or you act that way. Exactly. So defund the police. Yeah. I have to get your thoughts on what's going on there and your perspective more maybe locally to the Fraser Valley and Abbotsford Police Department, those areas. Yeah, I think, so I think, first of all, I think it's so important that people recognize that what happens in Canada is so different than what happens, obviously, in the U.S.

I think that we have different policing models. We have different ways that police are trained and screened and all of those kinds of things. And I think the unfortunate thing is, is that a lot of these conversations are probably happening. I think it's good to have the conversations, but maybe with too much of an influence of what we're seeing, like the George Floyd's, the Brianna Taylor's, like, you know, all of those kinds of examples. And that's not to discount what at all is happening in those situations. I think it's so important to be able to look at that. Also, just purely from a prevention perspective, we don't ever want to go down that road. But I think we do forget.

And even just within Canada, I would argue that policing on the West Coast is vastly different than policing in Toronto. And part of that is like maybe the makeup of sort of the region and all of that. We don't, you know, within the Fraser Valley don't have, let's say, for example, issues with carding like they do in the Toronto area. And, you know, defunding the police, I think it's, I don't know what if people have the stereotype of what it is. I think we slowly over time, as a result of a number of factors, I think the police became the de facto sort of response for so many things. If you speak to police officers now, the job of a police officer today is so different than what it was I would even argue 10 years ago, 20 years ago. And, you know, things like mental health and addictions sort of became their responsibility. I don't think that they necessarily wanted that.

they certainly recognize that they aren't properly trained in those, but because they're dealing with those kinds of calls, they've had to then educate themselves, right? And so we have good programs like CAR-6-7 and Surrey. What is that? Which is a mental health program that works specifically, it's a partnership between police, so RCMP, and psychiatric nurses, to be able to deal with those caseloads where it's not a criminal issue. It really is the kinds, obviously, the behaviors that they're engaging in are criminal and some of those things that they're doing are criminal. But the root cause is really, you know, somebody could be having a psychosis, a psychotic episode, or they have schizophrenia, or they have substance, a severe substance

abuse addiction and they're going into a, you know, a psychotic sort of substance abuse, you could become delusional because of substances. That requires a different approach. And criminalizing that isn't going to solve anything. And so it's this recognition that they work together as a partnership with a psychiatric nurse, and they have a caseload, and they work with a particular sort of subset of the population that have high mental health needs to be able to do things like follow-up, services, those kinds of things, divert them out of the criminal justice system so that you're really getting at the root cause. And I think it's not just, you know, Car 6-7, Abbotsford has their example. Vancouver Police also has Car 8-7. They're very similar

kinds of things. And so it's unfortunate. So I know the recent example that everybody has seen that video in Colonna. I believe it was Colonna. I can't remember. Oh, of the girl being dragged. Of the, you know, the nursing student that was being dragged across, you know, the hallway. The hallway. And so those things should never obviously happen. I think we, I don't know, though. I don't know the exact sort of circumstances. But I think certain things like partnerships like Car 6-7 and having those kinds of things would prevent, you know, those kinds of situations from happening. But I think it's funny. that I think that police would certainly say that defunding makes sense because in the sense

that if what we call defunding is taking those funds and taking those services or the money, redirecting it to those areas that actually needed, right? Like, police have become de facto having to deal with mental health calls or deal with, you know, suicides and those kinds of things. Of course, if you can redirect that and actually have appropriate psychiatric facilities and appropriate wings in hospitals and funding those properly, you don't need the police. Police don't need to be there to deal with those kinds of things.

But you can't just simply, I mean, police are still going to be needed, right, to deal with other things, unfortunately. But it is, and it's coming from a number of different angles as well, right? Getting appropriate training. I think that the kind of training that you're going to need to be a police officer today is so much different. And I think that people forget that one of the things that they are taught, first and foremost, is to de-escalate. It is not to, you know, try and escalate a situation or use force, right? or inappropriate force. And so it is, they're getting that training.

And it's, I think, these unfortunate examples, it's a combination of that and everything that's happening, you know, sort of in the U.S., also particular political climate, unfortunately, in the U.S., that is bringing that light. And I think that, if anything, I think what is good about this is that people are having conversations. And it's no longer, though, enough to simply just have a talk. or, you know, I recently had a meeting with sort of Dr. Setwinder Baines, who is the director of the South Asian Studies Institute, who talks about the time is over for sort of the window

dressing, right? It's not enough to have a diversity and inclusion committee. That's wonderful to have people at the table to talk about those kinds of things. But I think that now is a turning point where, you know, it's not just police and academics that need to come together corrections. It's, you know, everyone that needs to come together to figure out what are actual meaningful, real action items that need to be done rather than sitting around and sort of talking about these kinds of things academically. And so, you know, I think what in our Canadian context, what we consider to be defund the police, I don't think is what is the same meaning as what is happening in the U.S. It's not taking away that money

isn't necessarily going to help the situation. If you actually don't redirect it to where it's needed, it's not going to work. Well, and this is an example of how policy decisions made under different governments really manifest themselves in our society today because they did shut down, I think it was in the 90s and then a little bit more in the 2000s where they shut down most psychiatric institutions for great reasons, but they didn't replace them with the things we need. Yeah, and so, of course, deinstitutionalization where you shut down and then again, you're right, it comes from a really good place. right? It comes from a good place of we don't think that it is good for their overall well-being to keep somebody locked up, isolated, you know, in an institution. But without maybe thoughts about, okay, but we need some other safety nets sort of out in that community to be able to do that. And I think that's sort of the same thing I would argue with defunding the police is that the

knee-jerk reaction of, I think it genuinely comes from a good and valid argument, which is when you have the really, really bad apples, right, that reflect. reflect poorly, of course I can see the call for they shouldn't, police shouldn't be doing those kinds of things. They're not trained to do them. They're not the experts to be able to do that. But again, I would hope that people would learn from history where the knee-jerk reaction of, okay, but you take that money away and you say, okay, that's no longer your responsibility. If you don't have a good comprehensive plan in place for, okay, then who are you diverting that responsibility to? And are you going to give that other sector, whatever that might be,

with hospitals or schools or doctors or social services, if you're not going to fund them properly to do that, it isn't going to fix or do anything to address those systemic issues that you're actually seeing. Yes, that's one point where I'm surprised that nobody's brought up Robert Shikowsky. I think I'm getting his name right. Oh, Chikansky? Yes. And his experience at the airport.

The airport, yes. Yeah. And so I think, again, that was. was probably also again, it's always, you know, people are looking for the simple answer and they assume, okay, well, police are at fault. I'm sure it was a combination of, you know, there's training, there's the lack of knowledge, the language barrier didn't help, like all of those things. And without looking at sort of the overall picture, I think that we forget, we get sort of lost in, I think it's great that some of these high profile cases are bringing people sort of a real

call to action. I think it is, though. I always say it's never good to make a decision out of extreme anger or out of extreme anxiety. I would argue the other way, too, when you're feeling so elated, you know, that adrenaline rush and that dopamine rush, that's also not a good time necessarily to make a decision either. It's, it really is also, you need to also take a step back and just figure out, look at the big picture and figure out what are the key things that you need to have in place. I think that what gets lost in all of this is, you know, through the, you know, the research projects that we do do through the center and in speaking with policing agencies, there's a lot of good work that police and corrections are doing that unfortunately doesn't get

reported, right, in the media. Those things are not, I think feel good stories are not necessarily the ones that catch people's attention. But it gets lost, you know, the people that actually do get helped and the things, the good things that do happen get lost in all of these horrific sort of tragic examples, which again, not to discount, but I think hopefully people will use that to learn, but also to take a good look at everything and not just zero in on the one particular incident. Absolutely. I think that that was very well said. I think the other point I wanted to ask about is Surrey RCMP versus municipal policing is a huge topic right now. I've already gotten Mark's thoughts on it. So I'd like to hear yours. You work with Aberyst,

It's for police department, I assume a fair bit, which is a municipal police department, but you obviously have Chilliwack, which is RCMP normal. So what are your thoughts on their trying to decide between the two? Interesting. Okay, so I don't know what smart take-on is, and it'll be interesting. I haven't paid attention to what does take-on it is. I think, I mean, obviously, we know it's moving forward because that is Doug McAllum's thing. I think I do understand, so first of all, I do understand.

Surrey is very, very large. It's a huge district. And just by the sheer sort of size of the city and the scope of the issues that they have, I do completely understand why they would want a municipal police force. I think what it comes down to is always trying to understand what is the motivation. I think that, you know, certainly Vancouver has one. You know, Abby PD, which used to be Squamish, and then, you know, they did the transition over as well, right? And Delta has one.

And if, you know, the mayor's belief is that having a municipal police force will, let's say, get rid of a gang problem, I think there's pretty good evidence that that, it won't do that. Vancouver has issues, right? Like, people who have municipal police, Abby has issues. Abbotsford, like, having a municipal police force doesn't get rid of whatever crime problem you're trying to address. if it's about accountability and actually working for the community, I can see that. I think there are other ways to do it, though.

I don't think that there's, it's interesting that not a lot of thought was given to, why not have, let's say, a police board, right? That would give maybe some accountability sort of to Surrey. So I don't know, because I've never read anything from, I don't really know what the true sort of. of motivation is for that. I do understand why, you know, because of the size of the region and the scope of the issues and the kind of unique problems that they're facing. I just wonder whether

or not it's really worth it in the end when you think about what they're reporting is that it will be much more expensive. And are the residents of Surrey willing to pay for that is a good question. And it's not just are they willing to pay for it, but is it going to, are they going to reap the benefits? Are you actually going to see the things that you think? And yet, I'm not quite sure what those benefits might be. I mean, I understand the move. I think it's inevitable it's going to happen because he's been on that path and the provincial government has okayed that and the creation of a police board and all of those steps are moving forward. I'm just not sure at the end of the day what is going to be different, I guess.

Yeah, and I guess you're wondering what the goal is so that you can evaluate it and say, I think that this is going to happen and they may be able to achieve their goals depending on what they are, but you just don't know what they are. Yeah, I think it's whole hard to do that. I think really if all they want is just someone that focuses in on Surrey and, you know, is accountable to Surrey, it perfectly makes sense. I do think it makes sense. I just think that where I have, you know, from an academic perspective, a little bit of trouble figuring out what's going on is when you have a mayor who isn't transparent with either the financial information or how those decisions and what is driving all of that, when it's not transparent, it becomes really difficult. And I think that you don't develop trust with your residents that way by not being transparent. Yeah, that's not a good way to start it. It's not a good way to start it. And, you know, I hope, I hope that it achieves. I'm sure, you know, they've got, you know, a number of good, you know, officers, people who will sort of stay.

They'll know the area. I don't think the transition is going to be an issue. I think it's why now and for really what benefit is that going to outweigh the additional cost or the additional sort of other issues that may come about. Yeah. Do you have any thoughts on the fact that Abby? had some corruption issues previously, and they're in municipal. I know that RCMP is going to have problems as well inevitably, but do you have any thoughts on the size and scale of Abbotsford Police Department

and the corruption scandals they had a little while ago? So the interesting thing about the corruption thing, one thing I think it's a nice that you asked about that. I think what we forget is, of course, that was all over the media. It was something like 17 officers, right? And it really called into, it was things like, because it really did, it called into question the, credibility of an investigation, which had huge ramifications for decisions that were made

and all of those kinds of things. I think what obviously didn't get reported in the media is once all the investigation through all of that was done, it was really maybe one or two officers, I think, ultimately in the end that were charged and dealt with, yet it started off as sort of 17, right? We hear about the 17. We don't hear about, oh, really by the end of it, if it was sort of one or two. I don't think that you're going to get... I don't think any police agency is immune to those kinds of things. I think it probably gave them an opportunity to look at sort of their training. I think that the training municipals do differently than RCMP,

RCMP being a large federal organization. You know, everybody, I don't know if people, they all go to depot, you know, and sort of get their training there, whereas the municipal agencies, I think, typically largely do it through the Justice Institute. So I don't know if, you know, part of that might be training. So I don't know where Surrey may go with training. And I think it's important to look at who you're getting to train your potential officers and what they're getting trained in. And so I really think it's making sure that that culture right from day one is the kind of culture that you want to instill in your officers.

So I think that'll be sort of the, you know, what Surrey decides to do sort of in the end, but I don't think that any, I don't think it's immune. I think that we have to be careful about taking one incident and assuming that, you know, that's horrible to take the one incident or the one officer and paint the entire all of police or all members with that same brush. Well, and I think you're in a unique position to always see that because you do work with Abbotsford Police Department all the time. You see the officers who are willing to come in, sit down and try and have conversations on how to do things better or what problems they're facing. So I think that that's really great to be able to get your

perspective and Mark's perspective because you really have been there listening to the good officers and giving way more holistic understanding of what's going on. Because even with the 17 officers being charged and two actually being followed through, a lot of people, if I wrote that in a newspaper, people would read it as 17 officers are really guilty, but only two actually get held accountable. That's possible, yeah. And that's the mindset of people who are usually reading the newspaper is that things are probably way worse and justice isn't being served. Do you have any thoughts on our justice system at this point in time working within it and seeing some of the details of it?

I think that one of the things I think certainly has come to light is this pandemic has really forced across, I mean, I wouldn't just say the criminal justice system, but probably social service agencies as well, is to reimagine sort of how we do things. And I think it is sort of a turning point. I think obviously right in the stages of the early part of the emergency and everything like that, things just sort of shut down. But people had to very quickly find, you know, I don't know that necessarily they were unique, but just a different way of doing things, right?

This notion that we're all going to do court hearings now via a video conference. And, you know, really let's think about, is this a really chargeable offense? and we're only going to put forward cases that really are out of the public interest that have a good chance of successfully being prosecuted. Those are good conversations to have. And I think that we're seeing that. I think that slowly we're seeing changes.

I think it takes a long time, unfortunately, in the criminal justice field to see changes. A lot of times you don't see them until a case goes all the way the Supreme Court of Canada. and in essence, those judges are saying, you've got to make this change. You've got to do it. Otherwise, this is what's going to happen.

I think a good example that we see of that was segregation in correctional facilities where we just take it face value. This is the way that they've been always doing things. This is a way how we always do things. And so we continue to do those things that way until, in essence, someone calls you out on that. Could you tell us a little bit more about what segregation actually looks like in reality? Yeah. I mean, there's two different types, right? There's the administrative segregation and corrections,

and then there's sort of more the punishment-based, I think, where, you know, as a result of safety issues that sort of happens. And I think when I've talked to correctional officers about it, I think that what gets lost, I think certainly it's not perfect. Someone being isolated, right, large part of the day, either 20 to 23 hours a day, sort of in a cell by themselves, with no meaningful human interaction, psychologically that is not good,

I think, for anybody's mental health. And so it's not ideal. I think that we forget there's a very, very small segment of, I think, the offender population that sort of in some ways prefers that, either because they're afraid for their own safety, right? But I think what was clear is that having someone,

you know, we have, the Office of the Correctional Investigator has done a number of reports looking into this where you have a small segment of the population that is basically in an individual cell, no sort of contact for very, very prolonged periods of time. And we've had obviously high-profile cases in Abbotsford, in Alberta, and across the country of people who've committed suicide as a result of their experiences in segregation. And so that, of course, needed to change.

I think that it was, you know, corrections always said, sort of we didn't have a good alternative, but now they're sort of forced to really have to reimagine that because it isn't working. And the Supreme Court of Canada has essentially said you can't, meaningful contact is not, you know, an officer walking by just saying, how are you doing? That's not meaningful human contact. And so finding other ways. I think the other thing is obviously, you know, segregation in the United States. again, is very, very different than segregation, you know, that's happening in Canada. It'll be interesting to see, you know, they're hoping to sort of have sort of more like these

sort of pods, I guess, you know, so that people can have some sort of meaningful human contact. It'll be interesting to see whether or not that works, whether or not, because physically sometimes that there's going to need to be money put in to physically redesign the space inside of a correctional facility to be able to do that. Now, I think certainly I'd imagine. that with COVID, that has been put on hold because you certainly don't want an outbreak, you know, happening in an institution. But I haven't had a chance to speak with any correctional offices in terms of whether or not that sort of change things or put things sort of on hold. But I think that just from a mental health perspective, not the best approach,

but really there was a lot of reluctance to sort of change that until the Supreme Court of Canada finally said, you have to change that. It's a violation of individual rights. It is not good for mental health, it's not good for rehabilitation, which is what CSC is mandated to do, you've got to find a better way to do it. Yeah. Well, that's really good to know. And I don't think that we think about it enough about what people are going through when they're in prison. We think of, oh, they were only there for a year. They were only there for six months. And some people are more apt, like I've worked with clients who are way more adapted to surviving in a prison location and they understand the structure and they do fairly well there, and then they do terrible in the community. And so understanding that that is not a

place anyone wants to be, they may be more adapted to it, and they may be able to endure those circumstances, but it's not a fun place to be. And we often look at people, I see it all the time, where we'll see, oh, only got two years in jail. And it's like, that's a long, that's 24 months in a place I would never want to go and spend a night. Yeah, no, exactly. And I think, you know what, Listen, I think for those really, really horrible individuals who we've put every sort of resource imaginable and we've given them as many chances as we can, I think prison is an appropriate place for certain people. There's clear risk and safety issues with a very, very small sort of segment of the population. But you're right. I think that we're not doing anyone, not even us.

We're not making ourselves any safer by simply not providing services, not attempting to rehabilitating. because then you're just releasing someone back out into the community to essentially repeat the behavior that, you know, victimize so many people to begin with. Yeah, that's another one where people misunderstand when somebody gets released two-thirds into their prison sentence and then their mindset when you read the paper and that you see they got released early is, wow, our justice system is just broken and that's a misunderstanding. The police are actually allowed to check in and keep an eye out and monitor them way better, But we don't get to hear about that in the newspaper where it says person was released early.

And so sometimes I do wish that there was a zina Lee on the other side of the newspaper who's just able to add that in because that does change the story for people where we understand that there is a reason we're letting them out a little bit earlier and there is a logic to it. Yeah. And some of that is, I think, purely education. Like you said, like I said, I think there are just certain things in criminology where it doesn't involve application or sort of high-level thinking. It's just a strict memorization type of thing. and I think some of those concepts, like things like life in prison,

like when people hear that term where you get life, I think to the average layperson out there, it is this notion that you're in a prison for the rest of your life until you die, but that is not what our definition of life. Life means it's a life sentence, meaning that you are constantly being monitored. It doesn't mean that you're physically, right, segregated.

It's typically like 25 years. Yeah, right? And then even the levels in which we charge people for manslaughter, second-degree murder, first-degree murder. They're different, and they're different for a reason. They're different because we can hold them accountable for certain criteria in different ways, like manslaughter. You're not accusing the person of planning, scheduling, and then committing an act of murder.

You're getting them on they murdered someone. Somebody is dead because of their actions. But we don't explain that, I think, well enough sometimes, where people do misunderstand. And it's just that knowing thing, like you said, of understanding what's going on. Yeah. And because those kinds of things are so. rare too. In some ways, when things are rare, you don't have an opportunity to learn about the nuances so much, right? Homicide generally is a very rare event. And so when it does happen, you know,

it doesn't, you know, if something happens every day, you can learn from sort of mistakes or things along the way and people get a chance to hear about that. But when things, when events are sort of rare, you don't really get that opportunity to learn the ins and outs. Absolutely. So I'm going to try and geek out with you here because we have somebody who's an actual criminal somebody who actually understands psychopathy, understands those types of details of the criminal mind. And I think our listeners would just love to hear a little bit of the realities of psychopathy, what that means, how that manifests itself, what you see in children versus adults, how that works, what times, I think there's a point in time where men grow up and then they stop committing crimes. And there's just a number, I think it's like 35, where they just starts to peter out. So could we talk a little bit about the criminal mind, your experiences? You have a PhD in it.

So yeah, I mean, I think I know that a lot of people probably go into either forensic psychology, maybe go into chronology because I hear that all the time, right? You hear and, you know, when students get a chance to sort of introduce themselves and explain sort of why they got drawn to a field. But they probably do, right? I mean, you think about your shows. Everybody mentions all the different criminal shows that are out there. And I'm not going to lie. I think that certainly, obviously, I recall, you know, growing up watching those kinds of things and maybe that, you know, had an influence and gravitated me towards the field as well. But I think we have to remember it's those things are obviously sensationalized in the media. It is not, I mean, there isn't, you can get trained to, you know, learn about risk and all the risk factors and being able to identify and assess and do all those kinds of things. But it's not like this sort of magic like, oh, I can just sit down and sort of, you know, pick apart someone's sort of brain and figure out who they are. I think that psychopathy certainly is something that it was my sort of interest and that's, you know, what I studied when I was in grad school because it was an interest of mine. I think it has become so much more sort of popularized, I think. You'll hear it a lot. I think sometimes it's just thrown around

too much. Oh, so-and-so is a psychopath or it gets exchanged with, you know, that person's narcissistic and so we interchange the terms, you know, like narcissist and psychopath. And I don't think there's anything wrong in people being able to sort of understand some of those things, but just remembering that it's not as an easy, sort of like a checklist, right? We have a course that Dr. Amy Prevo does, and I think it's quite popular in Crim and just generally across the university. It's a psychopathy course where you get that opportunity to learn about the history. Where did that term come from?

What does that actually mean from a psychological perspective, right? And from a criminological perspective. And then going through how we typically, you know, assess, I think that Bob Harris, who developed the psychopathy checklist revised is sort of that is really the gold standard. But I think that, you know, we talk about psychopathy like it's like, listen, they are probably the worst of the worst of all offenders. And what makes them particularly, I think, scary for a lot of people is that lack of empathy, that lack of really being able to understand how another person is feeling and how they may be

suffering. And so that does make it particularly scary. And I think that certainly we worry there seem to be sort of, you know, you can make a psychopath and there's a very, very, you know, small segment of the population where it just seems to be that they're born that way. And when I say born that way, though, I don't mean that it's hereditary. I think that there's a lot of things that could happen while you're developing in the womb, right, that either brain structures don't get formulated properly or the connections and the wiring doesn't happen necessarily. in the right way. And so it makes it, you just can't develop those skills. Like if you can't identify an emotion, how could you understand sort of what that is? And so, I mean, there's a lot of research out there trying to find sort of how do we treat. And, you know, we haven't been particularly

successful being able to find that ability to be able to treat psychopathy. It may never happen. I think that, you know, like with any sort of mental health disorder, sometimes some of these things are, you might be able to manage it and mitigate the consequences or, you know, or reduce some of the consequences of the disorder, but you may never be able to get rid of it. That's sort of like saying, like, you know, once you have schizophrenia, it's not like you can get rid of it. You could manage it through different therapies or medication, but getting rid of it is, that's a tall order, I think.

And I think that, you know, we have that term, we sort of throw it around, but, But it's, and we see it all the time, like, you know, it originally started off really in a very, you know, in a prison sort of population, trying to identify a very small segment of the population that was sort of unique and just different in some ways. And people have sort of, you know, taken those ideas and gravitated out to, oh, you know, there's CEOs that are psychopaths or the white collar type of criminal. And so you see the work that's been sort of done in that area. And what does that look like out in the community? maybe that looks a little bit different. We certainly know it looks different gender-wise, right? Maybe there's also some cultural sort of differences or racial differences, and we see those

kinds of things. But it is. I think that it is the term I know that people like to hear because they think it's sort of exciting or whatever, but forgetting that sometimes a label, though, can have considerable consequences that maybe aren't warranted. So a number of, I know a lot of issues that have happened more recently in. the United States have to do with the use of that term because so when psychologists or psychiatrists are doing an assessment either for sentencing or for the death penalty or you know

the type of appropriate community supports or whether or not someone gets bail or not that term carries a lot of weight i think in court and carries a lot of weight with jurors and so um there have been i think some cases where a diagnosis of psychopathy has been considered to be an aggravating factor and been used to argue for why someone should get the death penalty. And okay, so maybe I could see that argument if someone, you know, is an adult and they have sort of all those risk factors, but there have been some unfortunate cases where as a result of, let's say, an adolescent having committed something, they've used the term fledgling psychopath or a budding psychopath to argue for why someone should get an adult sentence or a much

lengthier sentence. And sometimes those diagnosis have come back to be inaccurate. And yet you've made a decision that has affected someone's liberty, their freedom, on an assessment that maybe was questionable. Well, and on that front, you could also argue that it's a mitigating, sorry, for viewers, a mitigating factor is something where it lessens and it makes you less accountable, but not accountable. And then aggravating is when it suggests that you intentionally did it or there was some negative motive behind you. and so for it could be argued that it's a mitigating factor in the sense that they're born with it and that's just a natural mental development that they had that puts them at an extreme disadvantage and puts them in a situation where they're not going to get the support of the community with the label that they have automatically right to the gate and the other one that this overlaps with

that is not a popular topic is pedophiles because there's some discussion going on on whether or not pedophiles and people in that realm have a mental disorder that is legitimate that I've heard I think I read an anecdotal story in a textbook where it talked about the person was a normal person and had children and then got hit on the head or something had some wood thing hit him and then all of a sudden he went to the doctors and he said I am having inappropriate thoughts of my children I know they're inappropriate I know they're my children I don't want to be having these thoughts and he was trying to stand up for himself and say this is not what I want my life to be.

This is not who I want to go down as. And he had real troubles trying to get help because we're not interested in hearing the reasons behind somebody's terrible decisions of abusing a child. Yeah. No, I think that certainly, so I've always steered clear of that area wasn't an interest and I think it was

because it was my comfort level. I think that we all know that they pedophile sort of sexual assaults that is the bottom of the hierarchy and they're also typically sort of at risk, even within a prison, you know, setting of being assaulted and killed. And you're right. I think that we have these extreme sort of case examples. Like in psychology, there's always that famous Phineas Gage run, right? You know, the guy that had the rod that went right through his sort of his brain.

And so his personality changed a lot. So I don't, I haven't read that story. I don't discount it's possible. But I think you're right. I think that with that population of offenders, I think that we are really, society is not interested in learning about the whys, right? I think we leave that to the therapists and the counselors to try and sort of manage that risk because of who they typically tend to target. The most vulnerable population, right? I just think that it is very difficult. I think that

being said, I think the academic, you know, the forensic psychologist in me is like, you still have to follow due process, you know, all of those procedures, those rights that are available to them, follow sort of proper protocol that way. But you're right, I think that, I mean, certainly one combination that has been shown to be extremely dangerous and devastating is that combination of those psychopathic traits and then someone who is either a pedophile or a serial sex offender. Yeah. Okay, let's get away from that conversation. We can move on. I do want to hear more about psychopathy in the history and the checklist that you guys use, just so people have an understanding of what really is going on behind the scenes when we're trying to figure

these things out. What is fact and what is fiction? Yeah. So I think that, I mean, the gold standard that we use, I think, that in criminal justice is certainly Bob Harris, Psychopathy Checklist revised. I think that what people don't probably realize is that a lot of his work that he did actually came out of, you know, years ago in the early 1900s out of the work of Hervey Cleckley. And so there's some differences, like if you were to read sort of the original work of Herbie Cleckley, The Mask of Sanity. Again, it started off very anecdotally. He was working sort of in facility and noticed like this unique sort of profile of individuals where, and that's what Bob Hare has translated into this sort of checklist. So you see some of these stereotypical common things like,

you know, a lot of crime, not just a lot of crime, but also a lot of different types of crime. They're starting quite early on in, you know, sort of quite young, like under the age of 10 and it sort of escalates and gravitates there. And there's sort of, you know, these three components. I think we talk about sort of the emotional component of psychopathy, the cognitive component and the behavioral component. And so from an emotion perspective, it is very much this inability to really truly, you know, understand human emotions. It's very much just they can identify it very well and they can't really connect sort of on that human sort of level. It's that lack of conscience. And then sort of cognitively, you also see sort of that inability. You see sort of

things like just at very, very high levels, inability to take responsibility and understand sort of the factors that might have contributed to their behavior. Placing blame on others. You see a lot of that commonly. And then sort of behaviorally, again, the crime, it's not just sort of in a criminal round, but you'll also see it sort of, you know, in interpersonal relationships, just taking advantage and having multiple, let's say, sexual partners and just sort of not a commitment or kind of sort of long-term goals or they move sort of job to job or from person to person. And so you see a lot of that. And then clearly the consequences is just a high propensity and just the sheer amount of crimes that they're committing is what you see sort of. And so it's this,

You know, it's interesting. I think that a lot of recent work has looked at. There seem to be two types. There's sort of the type of psychopath that lacks the anxiety. And then some psychopaths that do sort of have a little bit of anxiety, but you sort of see this profile. And it is very much, it looks different. Again, I think that that sort of that sort of profile is more typical of what you might see in an offender population or in a criminal population. I think that sort of that checklist of things is very, very different in sort of, let's say, the white collar realm. Not my area. I haven't looked at the. that more recently in depth. But Paul Babiak has worked with, who originally was in sort of the organizational psychology, sort of human resource area, and has worked together with Bob to develop sort of what it might look like in more a typical business type of setting. And then again, in children, it looks quite different. So Dr. Adele Forth has done a lot of research, again, working with Bob Hare to develop a checklist that is more unique to youth and looking at what some of the, you know, some of the

those traits might look like in kids. Wow, that is fascinating. So where do you fit in on the research side of psychopathy? Where has your research led you? And could you tell us just a little bit about your previous research experience? Yeah. So I think most of my interest was, I've always had just an interest in generally with youth. And so that is where my interest was, is in looking at how do these things, what do these things look like in kids? And when I say kids, we're talking like, you know, 12 to 18 range. And are these things actually stable? So, I mean, I think we all know that so much change happens between the ages of 12 and 18. And at 18, you don't just, even though I know we define that as sort of adulthood, it doesn't, you don't magically somehow, you know, become more responsible and just know the things that you're supposed to be doing.

And so I think that what we see differently in kids and where I think kids are much more malleable, I think that we can change that trajectory. They're more likely, you know, that you can veer them off that course is how stable are some of these things? things. And there's some evidence that it's not that necessarily stable. So things that we think might be indicative of psychopathy, like the not having a lot of plans, not a lot of foresight, being quite impulsive. That's sort of the definition of adolescence. And so we have to be careful of making sure that we understand that when we talk about being impulsive or not making plans, that's different. It looks different, you know, in a 13-year-old than it does in someone who's a 35-year-old.

And so my interest in a lot of that work, you know, has been looking at what does it look like in kids? And, you know, there is. I mean, there's a good set, some small segment of them that will gravitate down that path, continue down that path, and will eventually full-flown, probably, psychopathy. But it's a very sort of small proportion. And I think that what we have to remember is we can probably manage and try and sort of correct some of those things. I mean, because many of these kids are coming from horrendous sort of

experiences and backgrounds that may be contributing to what looks like psychopathic traits and really might be a response to their environment. Wow, that is fascinating to think that there can be such overlap between those two individuals and that there is such a movement towards trying to address it within adolescence where you're right, it is hard to say children not making plans is kind of the norm. They're not the ones making the plans, but you still want to figure those details out what does research look like for you within the field that you're in and could you just walk us through what that looks like because most people have never done research they don't know what a hypothesis looks like or those types of details but we can demystify that yeah i think that yes

you're right i think that we typically think of this term hypothesis that you're supposed to have some sort of idea in your head about a prediction and i think i i i don't know if i like to work that way i think that i always go in you go in with a question you know and trying to collect the evidence and sort of, I think that the kinds of research typically you're doing when you're doing psychopathy research or any sort of offender research is you are going into institutions or, you know, you're dealing, doing interviews, doing surveys with offenders or people on probation. And so part of it is just, I mean, you have to have that stomach and that ability to be able to be in a room sort of with someone who's done horrendous things

and not necessarily react and try to be, you're coming from it really from an objective perspective. The nice thing I think as a researcher is that you're just trying to understand and learn about whatever that particular phenomenon is. Any decisions that you're making are not going to have an effect for them, whether that be parole or bail or probation. I think there's another realm for that. So I think that research I also think is always very collaborative. You're always working with someone. You're not doing it by yourself. You're not in a room by yourself doing everything by yourself, I don't think that makes for good research. It's this idea that you're working with a team and you're bouncing ideas off of each other and sort of having someone else look at it

from a different lens or combining your ideas together or trying to think of things sort of to get a big sort of picture and sort of address, you know, what that issue might be. And so I think I spent a lot of time and I enjoy doing it, spending a lot of time in youth attention centers sitting down and having conversations. I mean, I felt like they were conversations. Yes, they were structured interviews, but it was like having a conversation with these kids to get a sense and reading their files as well. That's part of doing research is, you know, getting a sense of what did their parents say about them, what are the kinds of experiences they had, and trying to sort of formulate that picture towards that sort of assessment or whatever that might be.

Do you have any examples? Because I think it would be cool to kind of hear who you work with, what detention facilities exist that you would go to, and what, how much research is required for those types of things because again I think the big struggle for people is thinking that sitting down and doing even an hour of research is incomprehensibly small in comparison to how much research you have to do on the back end before you even get to go into the detention facility yes I think that there's I mean from so many different angles I think that what people forget is when people go into your research there's so many hours just man hours just thinking about okay what are we going to ask them what is of interest what's the gap right to try and identify what that is because

you do want to contribute to something. You don't, I mean, I think while I even said replication is great, I think that new knowledge is important because you need to move the field forward. And so it's trying to identify, there's a lot of work in the background, collaboratively working, figuring, okay, what do we get administer, what questions are we going to ask? What kinds of surveys are we going to ask? What are the concepts that we're asking? Are we interested in measuring mental health? Okay, but if we talk about that, are we talking about depression? Are we talking about anxiety? Are we talking about personality disorders? There's so many things. You know, I think a good research project involves having a focus and having good instruments or

techniques or whatever that might be to be able to actually get the information that you need. And you're right, it isn't enough. A three-hour or a one-hour interview with someone is going to result in hours and hours of coding information, picking out the themes, figuring all that out, putting it into a stats program, crunching the numbers to try. try and figure out what are some, you know, what is the common prevalence of certain things or what's going on with these youth. And I think there's just even just some really logistical things like training. I think people think, oh, I just go in and I can just talk to them. I think it's always good. I always think training is important. I think you'd probably learn

quickly in this field whether or not it is or isn't for you. And I think it's better to find that out early. And so being able to work on a research team and let's say work with, you know, like our Center for Public Safety, working with Dr. Irwin Cohen or Yvonne Donderond or Amanda McCormick and just even basic things. Like I know that people think, oh, you know, I'm just interviewing someone on a phone. That is sort of that being able to develop rapport with someone to be able to extract information and do all those kinds of things. I would argue those are still transferable skills.

You're going to need those kinds of things to be able to sort of do that. I think there's obviously ethical things. There's hurdles that you get over. I think it becomes harder now for certain academics to do certain research in certain areas is because I think institutions become more protective of their information. And of course, they're always worried about how that might make them look. And you never want, and, you know, I think no agency or institution ever wants to be painted in a negative light. But I think that a researcher's job is not to hone in and identify all the bad things.

So you've got to do the big picture. But I think there are just sort of red tape hurdles in terms of getting those appropriate approvals. at sort of like the headquarters level or at the senior management level to be able to do that. But I think that's where within our faculty, they've done just a really good job

of having those relationships. And I think that, you know, at one point, Dr. Irwin Cohen used to be the RCMP research share before that was Dr. Daryl Pluckus, who's an emeritus now, having that established relationship with an agency to be able to, you know, the academic gets to be able to play

that independent sort of lens, right? because I think that a lot of times people question when police study their own issues and then report their own stats, I think people always worry about is that objective. Is it cherry picking? Is it all those kinds of things? And so having that partnership, I think, with an academic institution, allows, it gives you a little bit of that legitimacy, gives you a little bit of that sort of credibility that, you know, we had someone independent, independent of our agency do this particular study for us. Absolutely. And I think that that's so important because we do need to give credence and respect to the fact that you did go and get a PhD in this. And this is your interest. And I think that we need to accord a certain level of respect to that. And I think sometimes people without post-secondary educations really struggle to grapple with that and give the respect of like, I'll say, oh, Zina Lee, who's a PhD in psychopathy said this about psychopathy. And they're like, well, that's just one person. And it's like, it's one person who's dedicated like their whole life to a talk. And we should respect that and at least hear the points out. Do you have any examples of any experiences you had meeting with youth where it was not what you expected or something that viewers can learn about what's a you. I had Trevor Johnson on who was in a youth detention facility and he had that experience and it really helped him turn around because the correctional officers were so positive. So do you have any stories where you've been in the research realm working with people and anything interesting happen? I think that you have sort of different kinds of experiences. I'm glad that he had that experience. I think that my experience generally with, I mean, the thing that I like about youth is we all, I think, generally,

society probably generally is more forgiving, I think, of youth than they are of adults because we recognize that they can change and they're willing to change. And so the people that you tend to typically interact with, like correctional officers or police who, let's say, work with youth, really do have that mindset. I think that it really is about first and foremost helping and helping as best as I can and whatever I can do to get that youth off of that trajectory. And I think that, you know, I've had experiences where I think of the vast majority, the youth are sort of like that. It's been sort of unfortunate when I've had, it's only maybe twice, I would say I've done so many interviews, different kinds of interviews in different areas, not just from a research perspective, but when I used to do, let's say, like, restorative justice work and I would work with a youth, you know, on a file and their victim. And in all the interviews that I think I've done, the hundreds of interviews that are maybe twice I can think of where I was actually scared. Like it's very rare that, you know, you sit across from a youth and you think, I'm afraid of this individual.

I think maybe I was afraid twice in my entire time that I have interacted with them. And it's almost like they were just truly different. Like it wasn't attributed to the horrific background or all the environmental things. It was almost like a biologically, there was some sort of connection that just wasn't there where I thought, oh, it doesn't matter how many supports you have, unfortunately. This kid is going down a particular path that, you know, it is. going to be, end up just costing society a lot of time and money. But I think the nice thing about youth is that they do.

You have so many supports. I think that people are willing to, there's so many supports out there and finding, you know, when you get them early, you can make the difference. And despite the fact that they may have, that they may have coming from not great neighborhoods or maybe not great parents, if they can make a connection with someone that's a positive sort of mentor that seems to at least protect them from going down a a worse path. Yeah, that's one of the ways that I think you are a role model is because I don't like

that word coming across as I'm using it just for fun. I'm not, it's not everybody I meet is a role model. The reason, one of the reasons, I think you're an amazing professor, which is one reason, but the other is that you do go into these worlds, you do sit down with two individuals who, I can't imagine what it would be like to sit down and have to, feel that hopelessness of this person, no matter what I do, no matter what I try, and even going into a prison and saying, I'm going to sit down with some very dangerous people in certain circumstances who might not want the best for me and who might want it cause harm. Like, you don't

always know. And you're going in with a certain level of confidence in the guards and that's all great, but you're still going in there. And that's something some people wouldn't do. They would say, not for me, not risking my life, not worth it, have a good day. You're willing to take that risk in order to possibly save youth. And that is a very brave thing to do because you're not doing it in like a come in move in with me. You're like on a broad scale, if I can contribute research information

that benefits society where my research and my understanding can help someone in Canada, in US, in Austria, in all these different places. And that's what I think brings you to the role model table is that you are willing to go to those places that some people just wouldn't. and you're willing to do it for the betterment of all of society. That's nice.

I appreciate that. I think that, you know, everyone's got their role or their place. I think it's people have to figure out what that is. And I think that, you know, I think that some people could, you know, I could be accused of, well, it's easy to be sort of the academic because you don't necessarily have to get messy, right? And as an academic in some ways, you don't because I'm not having to, I'm not a psychiatrist. I'm not a, you know, I don't go in to do a risk assessment, let's say. of an individual person and then I have to submit a report, let's say, to a judge or to a

parole committee and they're going to read that information and then use that. I think that's a huge responsibility. But the people that do it, do it well and I think they're committed to that. I think that it's, I do think that even though it is objective and some people could say you don't get messy, I think that is. That's my way. And I think that many of our faculty feel that way. that's our way of being able to contribute, is to take all of that information to sort of contribute, synthesize that and, you know, pass that also down to students that are sort of coming through and hopefully collectively, right, we start to make dense. Yeah, absolutely.

And I think that that's important because Mark makes the point that police officers, unfortunately, never, he gave this analogy when I was in school, but that police officers are at a river basically metaphorically and waiting for the body to come down. and they just have to grab out the body and they never get to go up the stream to figure out what's causing it, what the role is, and that's kind of the role of academics, is to go to the top, what's going on, why is this occurring, and asking those questions, and on a broad scale, that can impact the whole world because we can take advantage of what you learned. And that's the role that academics play is they're asking the more broad questions. They're trying to make sure that this research doesn't only benefit UFE, Chilawak, Abbisford, is that it goes out to the whole population that, Maybe someone in Australia can utilize the one thing you learned about this one aspect of a person and apply it there as well. And so your information can scale in a way that a police officer's understanding might not be able to. And so I think that's important to understand that that's what you bring to the table. Could we talk a little bit about your PhD?

Because it is something that, as I've said, I think it intimidates people, but I think it's useful to understand what a PhD defense looks like, what writing that type of information looks like. because most people don't write at all during their day. If you're working at Tim Hortons, you're probably not writing all that much in your day, but you're writing crazy amounts of information with tons of research. Could you just tell us what a PhD looks like? So it's so interesting. I always, I feel bad in some ways when, you know,

you get asked like, oh, you know, I'm interested in grad school. And nowadays I think, you know, my take on this would have been different sort of 10 years ago. And I think it's just that things are changing. And that's not to say I think everybody, you know, shouldn't go out and get a PhD. or shouldn't go out and get, I think that, you know, learning is great. Whatever form it comes in, I think it's great. I think, but a PhD, it's a, it's a huge investment. I think it's a time and investment, just like law school is an investment.

Anything is an investment in getting an MBA, you know, a postgraduate degree. And it is a PhD is, it's trying to become, I think, very much an expert in a particular, it's a very narrow sort of area. And so the funny thing is, is though, even though we are trained sort of academically, like that yet within, I would say at UFV, at least within criminology, many of us say that we're very much sort of broad generalists in terms of just being able to take our research skills and apply them and transfer them regardless of the context or the subject matter. But taking a PhD is you're really are trying to become an expert in the field. And so it involves a lot of years

of just like reading. I think that people forget you need to read. It's not just the recent things. and I think the recent research that's come out, it's really getting a sense of like the history of how something came to be and then how things evolved, how did they change, how did they, you know, what did we learn from all that? And then figuring out what that little piece is

that you can contribute. I think that what coursework, anybody can take a course. I think that's not take a course. You can learn, write the papers, you know, get the grades. The difficult part I think about any graduate degree or any degree is that final cap, stone sort of project. And in a PhD, it's a dissertation, which is like this lengthy sort of

your project, your ownership over your study, that you're contributing to that field that's unique, that's got to be different to add to that existing body of literature, of scientific research. And, you know, it's an arduous process in terms of you're also, you know, you are having to defend, it's called a defense, right? You present that information. And there's a committee that asks you questions and, you know, trying to poke holes not in a bad way, but just really pushing you to think about what are the flaws. If you did this differently, how would you do it differently? What did you uniquely contribute? And what does this actually say about the thing that you're studying? So I think that the real, the difficult part of the

PhD is the writing of your actual dissertation because it's so many years of your time and knowledge and all of that sort of collaboration sort of all in one. And, you know, it is, it's difficult. I mean, yes, the gold standard is you get it published and whatever, but it's, it is contributing, you know, to that sort of scientific community. But nowadays, I always ask students, why, why a graduate degree? Why? Why post, like, figure out what it is that you want or what that degree will get you and figure out if you need that additional degree to get what it is that you want. I think that students are becoming a lot smarter now and talking about, they talk about return on investment. What is this degree or what is this designation going to give me?

And I do think it's important. I think learning is great. But don't do it for the sake of just doing it without an end goal, I would say. Yeah, don't just go get a bunch of PhDs just to try and show off. Yeah. Yeah. So how long was your, like... It's a long time.

So I think, so, you know, I know that ideally it would be nice to do a master's in two years. I did my master's in three years. I think it's three years. And then it was another, I'm just trying to think, another four years to do a dissertation. And then I spent another two years after that doing a postdoc, which is like, you know, I think that you see that also commonly in academia now too, where once you finish getting your PhD, do you do a postdoc, which is like even that much more expertise to try and really develop your research skills and be sort of independent of your mentor, which is what you see

a lot. How long was the paper that you had to write for your dissertation? So I think it was in, it's different disciplines have some have really set guidelines. I think in psychology where I was at, there wasn't really, they never said it must be X number of pages. But I think naturally they end up being in the ballpark of like 80 to 100. 100 pages. I think some places are much more prescriptive. I think in some fields, they say, well, it must be like 200 pages, but you're looking at like a good 80 to 120 pages of like your,

your knowledge, your product, whatever that study was. Wow, because that's incomprehensible to most people who are looking for maybe running a small business to invest years of a bachelor's degree, then a master's, then a PhD, then a postdoc. And that commitment gives you a, a certain level up on everybody else because you've narrowed your mind. Like, I know we don't like to look at people with master's degrees or PhDs as the different, but they are different because they've been able to narrow their thinking a certain amount, be able to speak concisely, have everything grammatically correct on a piece of paper for the most part, and put in that work to do the research behind the scenes and have the respect of going up

and defending all the work you put in really does put you in a different position mentally because you have grappled with very complex thoughts. And I think that that is something we don't say enough. We don't talk about it because it does make people who don't have it feel bad about themselves. And I totally get that. I don't want anyone ever feeling like they don't have a PhD so they can't talk about something. That's never the goal. But somebody who's been able to do that has narrowed their mind in a way that's been able to get out complex thoughts in a very succinct, clear way.

Yeah. Yeah. No, I agree. And I think, you're right, I agree with you that I don't think anybody should ever be, anyone should be able to come to the table and provide whatever their thoughts are, right? And I think that we do. We forget that the years that it takes, I think that, you know, Googling something doesn't make someone an expert, right? Like, there's a lot of, you know, intentional, you know, thought that goes into making someone an expert. And a lot of that is just sheer time. But I think that we forget and I think that it's unfortunate that in the United States, I mean, we, there's a difference between an opinion versus a fact versus a fact and I think that that everyone is entitled to their own opinion but not we can't disagree about facts those those things are there's a reason why you know we look to a doctor when we have a health issue we don't look to your neighbor down the street who maybe search something up on web md or something like that yeah that really concerns me especially with philosophy because I didn't I took philosophy courses and I loved them and I respect them immensely.

But I think a few of the ones that I took missed the point. And it's that philosophy is actually a tool in order to help you operate in the world and have the correct mindset and have the correct understandings of how people are, how to interact, how to build relationships, what's the point of life is not an abstract question that's meant to be left. Who knows? It's how is the best way for you to proceed forward and it's probably not staying at the minimum wage job you're at. it's probably going and finding your passion and trying to fill that. And I feel like you have done that, which is, again, why your role model is because you've gone out, you've chased the passion that you specifically have, and you've allowed yourself to complete that.

Like, at the end of your life, nobody can take that from you. Nobody can say, well, you didn't go and chase what you were interested in. You've done that, and that is what people need to aspire to because we often get stuck in the, well, I know the people in my community and they're all stuck in the same jobs, so I'll stay there. It's no, you need to find what it is and then you need to find a way to go get after it. And I think that you're an example of that in an interesting field that's outside of the sports that we typically think of people really going and chasing their dream is usually sports. But people can do that outside of sports in a really meaningful way. Yeah, I think, and it is. Like I understand,

I think it's so difficult, right? Because I know that we like to give kids that advice, like, Follow your passion. Do what you love to do. And I think that sometimes I think the unfortunate reality of that is that, you know, not everyone can do that, right? I think that, you know, we sort of joke and say that, you know, I've heard the joke that you can follow your passion, but only if you, you know, you come from, you know, X, you know, type of income bracket or whatever. It is. I think it's just, it's, sometimes it's just figuring that out. And knowing not only your strengths, but your limitations. I don't think it's bad to look at yourself and go, I don't do this well or this doesn't work for me or, you know, it's not to discount, I think, you know, whatever path you take. I think it is figuring out you can love, you can want to do so many good things,

but if you don't have the skill set or you don't have the knowledge, I don't think that that's probably going to be necessarily the best fit. I think I'm more of a realist. I think rather than being like an idealist, I would love to, you know, of course, you know, you send that message, you know, when someone's five or whatever, they can do whatever they want, chase their dreams. But you do have to, I think, really take a hard look at, and I think post-secondaries for that, to take a look at what it is you not only want and like to do, but what do you actually have the skill set to do, too. I think that that does,

that can, it requires a lot of self-awareness to be able to do that. And being able to stomach constructive feedback, I think. And, you know, we're not, we have different comfort levels with that. Absolutely. And I think math is a good example of that where we start to say those things of like, I'm just not a math person. And it's like, I actually respect you so much. I believe that you could be a math person if you put in the time and effort and you're just choosing not to, which is a different thing than you're just not whatever it is. And I think what's also interesting is that as a university professor and working on research is you're contributing to something that will probably outlive you. The information that you share and the work you do will be passed on

and utilized and put into other people's papers years down the road, and that that's a contribution that will outlive you in a very positive way that will make a positive impact on our community. So let's move it a bit into your personal life. Could you tell us a little bit about your personal background? Hmm, I don't, I born and raised. I, you know, I am very much a BC person. I have not, aside from, you know, I think it was a bit of a culture shock when I spent two years down, you know, in the deep south. But I, like I said, I think that I just, I had just like amazing teachers and educators who, and I don't know if that might contribute to why I chose the direction that I did. I just think that I had, and they were just different.

different ways. And I think that, you know, that probably contributed to sort of who I am and who I, you know, saw and that desire to sort of be like that. You want to emulate, right? Like, that's a role model is probably something. You look at people and you go, oh, that trait or that personality, that behavior is something that you look up to or that you want to aspire to be. And I think, It just happened to be, I guess, that I tended to find those things maybe in teachers and in educators. And so I think that not to discount, I think, nobody's life is perfect. I think that, you know, we all have sort of things that don't always go as plan. But I think that learning how to take sort of the good with the bad and then just figuring out. And so sometimes when you didn't have necessarily the best experiences, figuring out how do you make that work for your or what do I do sort of, you know, independently? I think that that probably drove a lot of my personality traits

are just being quite independent in terms of not, like, not seeking help. You know, sometimes that can be a bad thing, like when you really need it, and realizing that you can't do it on all on your own, you're going to need help is probably a downfall. But I think it was just sometimes when you don't have, you know, something's not working out for you or whatever. It's a personality clash or something. It's finding that other way, that other avenue and just being flexible and adaptable.

And so I think those are just some of the things I just try and think, you know, at the end of four years of doing an undergrad degree, I think, yes, we want you to come out with some grim knowledge and some skills. Yeah, I think being adaptable, being flexible, being open to, always being open to seeing the other side and just learning are just, I think, regardless of what stage you are in. life. Those are some things that are so important. Absolutely. Do you have any adversity you faced in your youth or any experiences in your youth you could share? Because I think that that does humanize the person who's become so accomplished. I think I don't know that I have, you know, I always think, and again, my reference point I think is so different because, of course, I feel like the kids that I've interviewed, you know, in detention centers, my experiences don't come anywhere close to that. So to call the things that I've had adverse experiences seems like a disservice to people who truly have experienced

that. I think, I mean, I probably wasn't, in some ways I was your stereotypical, probably kid, you know, parents, you know, first generation here, right? And so then there's the language barrier. And so navigating that, you know, was always sort of tricky. I think not having necessarily the best relationship with my parents, probably because, again, it was a culture clash, right? And so when you are, you know, in that role and I see this.

And so sometimes I saw it, you know, and sometimes I had those aha moments when I took like a sociology class or whatever, you know, thinking, oh, that's what that is. I didn't have adverse in that way. I think it was just more the struggles of the language barrier and then the culture. And then in some ways, I think the things that, you know, just not, you know, you clash with parents generally when you're growing up. But I think that when you have that added. language barrier plus sort of the culture, it I think can become something where it can become

sort of a big, a bit of a divide. And trying to navigate that isn't, it's tough, right? Like, I don't know that I think it probably made me think about how I wanted to be as a person and now how very much I didn't want to go down a particular road, like seeing, let's say my parents struggle financially was something that you just see it and you're like oh my god and i just i remember thinking like these pivotal moments like i just i never want to be in that position ever ever again and i don't know if um it was something always conscious in my mind but i certainly think that it made me make financial decisions just so much differently um growing up and just seeing things like you know when you had you know i don't think there was any domestic violence but just

sort of that strain when you see parents having i thought oh i never wanted to, I remember very vividly thinking when I was like seven or eight thinking, I don't never want to, even little things like my mom never drove, never learned how to drive. It was, and it was a reliance, right, on someone else to always do that. And I thought, I never wanted to have to rely on somebody else. It seems like an odd thing to think. But that was, it just made up part of my narrative, I think, of who I was and whom identity was. And sort of maybe drove me to try to fiercely be independent rather than what I saw was having to rely on someone because maybe that was just a negative thing. Yeah, that seems so common where people will see that

within their parents and work so hard to go the other direction. I know that that's me with finance is I know what it's like to not have enough food on the table. I know what it's like to be stressed about those things. And I work every single day to make sure that I never go back to that place or feel like those are my vulnerabilities because I have been there. And so I, but I do see how a few years ago, I was way too focused on what job is going to pay the most money and getting into disconnecting myself from what I actually want to do and what brings me passion. And so I do see that that happens to a lot of people and I think it's good to talk about

it because everyone's story is a little bit different, but we all have these like meta-narratives of and then I went too far with it and that was probably not the best idea. And so I think that that's useful to know. Is there anything in your current life that's relevant? You mean in terms of adversity or? Just in terms of life experiences? Is there anything interesting going on other than the director position? I don't know. I think just trying to navigate COVID is probably always interesting. I think that I was, I just never, I found it interested. I was never, even you convinced me, this is doing this and putting yourself out there like media wise or just doing things over a video

conference, those were never really in my comfort zone, I don't think. I think I tend to be more of a private person. It's just the way that I am. It's like you, I think I wait. You know, you probably have maybe have seen it just as a result of seeing offenders in sort of their horrendous backgrounds where trust for me is not like an immediate thing. And so you wait and once you feel sort of truly comfortable is when you sort of share. But I think that, you know, I was not one to, I had to switch. I had to totally pivot and be like, I'd never video conferencing, doing like meetings over, you know, all of that. Not my comfort zone, but COVID hit. And wow, like, just people had to pivot. And now it becomes like second nature. It's interesting how sometimes a catastrophic event

can really put people to the test, I think. I think I remember in grad school, someone saying that your personality in who you are isn't really best exemplified by how you are every day when things are going well. So when you don't have adversity going on, you don't got food on the table, you got money, you are, things are going great in your relationships with other people. That's not maybe when your true personality.

It was an interesting way to think about personality. Your personality comes out when you are the most stressed out, when something maybe traumatic or catastrophic happens and how you react to that. Because maybe that speaks to your ability to cope, your ability to be adaptable and be flexible. and I think, I don't know if necessarily my bad experience has contributed that,

but I certainly feel like I had to learn it to pivot. And what I hope people learn, I think that people deal with stress very, very differently. And I've heard this, you know, among teachers and educators, the people that you thought, I guess, could deal with, that would be resilient in the pandemic weren't necessarily the most resilient. and the people who you thought, oh, I'm worried about them because it seemed to flourish. And so it's interesting that an event like this that just changes how you interact maybe might actually really show your sort of true background and what your true sort of personality is.

Yeah, that's kind of like university though, too, right? It's because you go through it and your first course, you're not going to do grade in because it's your first course and what do you know? And to go into it and be like, I'm going to get an A plus on my first course. course is like, what do you know? You're just starting out. It's okay to not do well. And you're going to have to pivot every single time. And I see a lot of that with my partner. She's going to school. And it's, well, like, I really tried to do it this way. And I really tried to memorize. And then that didn't work. And so I started drawing diagrams. And maybe that did work. And it's constantly

pivoting. And I think that people who learn that through school are people like yourself who walk away with it and go, well, now I can pivot through almost anything. Almost anything. I can get through a pandemic, I can pivot when I need to pivot. And I think that that's incredibly valuable for people to understand and start to implement into their own lives. Yeah, that's what I'm hoping. I do think, I mean, even though I know that people are getting fatigue and they're worried about the pandemic and what this means for a second wave and all of that, I do think if people can just remember, like, that you adapt. I think that, you know, humans are great at adapting. Genoa, we have the capability to do that. And so it's just, again, taking a step back, trying to

stay as stress-free as possible to be able to make that best decision. But that's what I hope. I think that for students, I know that I think they're worried about what an online environment is going to look like. I don't think it's ideal. I think people, it's not for everyone, of course, but hopefully, you know, it is something that you'll learn a different skill having come out of that, and that sort of blip in your education might be a little bit different, but it's just going to be different. It doesn't mean it's going to be bad. It's not going to be necessarily maybe the best, but it doesn't mean it's going to be the worst. And if you can at least, go in with a mindset of just being open to whatever format that information is going to be.

And if you have to adjust, being prepared to adjust, I think is what is going to get people through out and survive in the end. Awesome. Well, can you tell us a little bit about your course? I'm pretty sure my partner is enrolled in your course, but I don't know if you're the one. I don't know if you're the one teaching it or if she has another professor, but could you tell us about how you're approaching online courses? Because I know every professor is going to do it a bit differently.

So I won't be because with the director position, I think that it doesn't give me that opportunity to teach anymore. And so I think, yes, I think at the school level anyways, we've been having a lot of discussions. What I really like about our faculty is because we're just so committed to ensuring that students have a very supportive, like, good experience. We've already had discussions among our core faculty about just thinking about what are some best practices for online. And so we've tried to put that together. I've been doing my best, you know, to sort of reach out to students to get their feet. feedback on how the summer went because the summer was a little bit, probably but more of an experiment in the sense that, you know, last minute decision and so they had to scramble to sort

of get things together. But I think generally within CRIM, we're really taking the position, you know, that I think this is more from the university. They really want to do sort of asynchronous courses. So asynchronous means that you're not required to sort of log in on a set day and time, right? But at least given that, you know, the information is there, students can log in when they need to because we're just recognizing we're sure that people may be in different time zones. You have different responsibilities. If you have child care, you're working or remotely or whatever is going on, that they need to be able to access that sort of on their time. And but it is, it's connecting. And so I think we've tried to, you know, find strategies and ways of

still connecting with students online, because I know it's harder to do. And people just sometimes just don't have the technological capability to do that either. And so, you know, making yourself available. And, but part of it is it's a two-way street. I think that we're all. all committed. We are, you know, we'll be putting information up and, you know, making ourselves available. But it's also, we can't read minds. I always say this. It doesn't matter what sort of course that I teach, even if I'm teaching it in class. I would love to be able to read people's minds, but I can't do that. And so I think students need to also come to the table with, what do I need? And you have to be vocal. You've got to be assertive. It's, you know, I know

students always, oh, I don't want to ask questions, or I feel weird, like it's intimidating, approaching someone. Don't, you know, just throw all that out the window because the only way that we're not, the only way we're going to know is if you're getting something or not getting something is if you tell us. And so I think communication is, is really key. I think that it's important to reach out and reach out often. You know, I think people have different comfort levels.

We're not having really like your tradition. It's not going to be like a Zoom lecture or anything like that. I think that some people may have sort of like these little sessions where you could sort of drop in and have a conversation. But it is, of course, you're going to have to be required to be a bit more independent. But within the school, I think we're just trying to find ways of whether that be connecting with the information either through a podcast or through a media article or through a documentary or through videos or other multimedia ways to try and replace that experience in the classroom with that interaction between the professor and the student. That is a lot of work. I cannot imagine what that must be like. The other one, I've never gotten to ask a professor this, so I'm going to take advantage of the opportunity. What are your thoughts on rate my professor? Because it is something that is like the holy Bible for students, and from most of my understanding, most students use it, recognizing that some people are going to be outliers and be dramatic and be inconsistent. But do you ever utilize it? Do you ever look at it? Do you ever think, like, oh, this is good feedback, helpful, useless, mean, unnecessary? So interesting. So I find it interesting. I never know. I'd be curious to know whether or not students actually use it either. They do. They absolutely. They absolutely do. That's very interesting. And so I guess, A, I find it a little bit odd because, well, I mean, I don't know about all institutions, but I know UFB, we do course evaluations for every single course, essentially, for most courses. And so I don't know. I mean, I put more stock in those than I do. And because those tend to get a higher response rate, obviously.

than rate my professor. We don't, I just, I find that I, I have yet to be proven that it's legitimate. So I just don't, I feel like I have never gone on there to look, let's say, at a potential candidate. Let's be hiring someone. I'm never going to go there and see what that says. So I don't frequent the site very often. I can honestly say that. And so I don't know. And I think that, I think it's probably not any different than maybe like reviews you see posted on social media. I never know what mindset someone was in. You can see the mindset once you go on there. I imagine like if it's something that particularly bad that happened that didn't reflect, you know, I get it. And so sometimes I have found though, and I think this happens particularly

with statistics, is how somebody feels at the beginning of a course is so different than how somebody feels at the end of the course. And so I think that formally and officially, I don't look there. And personally, I don't look there. I don't know how helpful it it would be without, I think I would always rather, and I know that students are sort of reluctant and I'm hoping maybe this is one of the things that I'd like to do as director that's to make students feel more comfortable just coming forward and actually saying how they feel and not being afraid that somehow if I know who that comment is coming from that, that that's going to have an effect on either their grade or whatever that is. Because I do think, I think

that we do need to be open to feedback, constructive feedback, both positive and negative. I just don't know. It's interesting as a student, I never had that option. So I never had the option of going to a site before I was picking courses to figure out who should I take a course from. It just wasn't there. And so I always am curious, what does a student think? So when they go there, do they think, okay, well, I'm going to go there because this is going to help me pick a course? Pick a, pick a professor for sure. And I think what you get out of that is hypothetically, there's criminology course you want to take and there's four professors you go through and one of them is a one star terrible reviews and there is like only two positive reviews and there's like a hundred

negative reviews you can be pretty confident that all of those people aren't biased and so on that level that's where I see rate my like I agree that there are some people who are like well they didn't help enough and it's like well did you reach out enough like we don't know that we don't know that so I guess you're right I guess I would then approach it maybe quite scientifically I guess You're right. If I ever went on there, I would want to look at sort of like how many posts there are. Also the time frame, right? Because I imagine like, you know, maybe something from 10 years ago doesn't necessarily reflect how someone is doing. It's just interesting. I think that this is probably the pitfalls of research, right? We tend to, when we're drawing conclusions, we are talking about generally what most people think or what the majority of people, their common responses are, which when it boils down to it for you individually may not apply at all. And so that is, where what I worry about is students sometimes picking and just sort of going with what it is, not thinking about those other things, not thinking about, okay, well, how many, and what are they saying, and what is it for? So I would hope that if students go there that they do that, I would

rather, I think a better approach is, why don't you just reach out to the people that you think you're going to take a class with an ask? Now, sometimes I think students don't have a lecture, unfortunately, right? We have courses where only a particular person teaches it, and that's it. you have no choice. So I don't know how going to that website would be helpful. I guess maybe so they know what they're getting themselves into assuming the information is accurate. But I think what's better is just reaching out to the person and asking, like, being honest and up front and saying, okay, I'm a little bit worried about this course because of this. And I've had that. I've had the odd email that, you know, from someone saying, oh, I'm worried, how much do I need to know

before coming into this class? I think it's a better approach. Like, that's a more personalized approach, rather than going to somewhere where you don't know how many, how helpful. Well, at least for my partner, I know she uses it not to answer those types of questions, but on how they teach, because there's some teachers who just stand there, read off of the PowerPoint, and there's no extra detail. There's different ways that professors go about it, and some can just drive you mad. Some can just be a ridiculous amount of homework, where it's like, this is a first year course and I have like seven hours of homework to do this is nonsense. I don't agree with this. Some professors tell you this is what's going to be on your exam and then they do something

completely different and then you're kind of left like, what am I supposed to do? Because the professor will always say like, this is what you should expect, but like who knows? And so they'll always say that. So you're always stuck at the mercy of whoever's telling you that information. True. Yes. And I would say even in sometimes, you know, I want to take the sort of more, not high road, I think certainly people will do whatever more information, the better. And I think that if that helps you either ease your anxiety or use your stress, then that's great. I think the other thing to look about it is that sometimes we have no choice, unfortunately, in what we're exposed to, right?

But you have choice in how you react to something and how you adapt to something. And I think that sometimes what you need to learn in probably undergrad is you may be sitting in it, because of, for whatever reason, it could objectively be that the person is boring or it's just a mismatch with your learning style and the person's teaching style. Your ability to get through that and just handle that in a, maybe a respectful, constructive sort of way, I think speaks volumes about your integrity and your ability as well. And so, because I think that there's certain things, Not everybody loves doing everything, right? I mean, even if you ask professors, like the things that they love to do, I mean, I don't

think that anyone's going to, you know, raise up their hand and say, oh, I love, you know, grading bad papers. There's nothing in a job is going to be 100%, you know, perfect and positive all the time. But it's your ability to handle that and to get through it in a way and met and with your integrity intact. Absolutely. I actually had that experience going through. I won't name the professor, but where I was up against a circumstance where this professor was

pretty well known for being inconsistent and a little bit unreasonable. And so I went into it knowing that and I said, I'm not going to leave my values at the door. I'm going to drag them in. I'm going to drag this person through it. And we're going to go through it. And we're going to go through it each time because they're there to teach. I'm there to learn. We're on the same page. I'd like to learn from you. But we disagree on some pretty important things. And I'd like to hash that out in a professional academic way, where I'm not taking up class time unreasonably. I'm not pausing the lecture to debate with nonsense reasons, but I'm going to focus on what you're saying and take a stance where I have to take a stance, and we're going to go through that.

And that was, at the end of it, I was like, this is one of the best courses I've taken, not because I agreed with the professor, but because I grew from that. I didn't let go of my values. I didn't leave that at the door. And so many people get used to that mindset of, you know what, I'll just let it go. I'll just ride the wave. I'll just go through it. And you lose a little bit of yourself in that because you're not letting yourself see what you're capable of. No, and I agree. I think it is. I think when you come from a values-based perspective and that drives your behavior, I think that you can never go wrong. I think it's always, you know, also I say that I ask people, do you really want to die on this? Is this the hell you want to die on? Right. I think that sometimes those are very valid decisions, right? Like you just don't either have the time, the energy, or just, you know, know the effort you want to put in to be able to do that. But you're right. I think that hopefully

I think what's interesting about criminologies because we sort of intersect the academic with like the actual applied where you have to go into these agencies that have mandates and protocols and ethics and all those kinds of things. We walk a fine line and yet we don't have like a, you know, we're not like psychology where they have like this body that accredits, you know, psychologists and all of those kinds of things. It's walking that fine line. And so it's understanding what are your values and you've got to be able to do the things that you do with integrity. Yeah, absolutely. So pivoting a little bit, a lot of small businesses are role models to me. They're, there are frontline role models because they've chosen

a passion, an interest, whatever it is, and they've chosen to run with it. And they've chosen to start a business, sacrifice their income for it, hire people for it, go through a whole process. I'm hoping to hear some small businesses that you might like in your community, in the Fraser Valley, that really interest you because I think that that's important to build the areas that you're interested in up so we can also hear from them. Yeah, it's a bit tough. So because I don't live, I feel like I don't know, even though I've, you know, born and raised in BC, I feel like I didn't really get to know the Fraser Valley until I started working at UFV. And even today, I still feel like I don't know the Abbotsford or the Chiloac, you know, sort of mission community as well as I would like.

So I don't know sort of about that. I think that, you know, I think about some of the, interestingly, I feel like I've learned about more small businesses as a result of, I think, the pandemic, and people sort of responses to that. And so I know where I am in Coquitlam, I think that there was a family restaurant. I was like called Jamila's Kitchen, I think is what it was called serving like Middle Eastern food or Persian food. And they were, it was just this, even though they, you know, maybe it was losing them money. It was never, they, their policy has always been from day one. You got no money, but you're hungry, we'll feed you. And they, you know, you can come in and they will put a meal together for you and it was just those kinds of small businesses I think that

come from a true place of wanting to help their community is really I think those are the things that I think are so important so I think things like that I've seen a lot on sort of Facebook like community groups like city groups and where they sponsor those kinds of things and so I think that just even like the small offbeat like coffee shops that are just like not your big chains right I think those are great. I can't think of any off the top of my head where within my community, I think probably I should probably do a better job of sort of thinking about those kinds of things. I feel like I can learn about those a little bit better. Even within Abbotsford, I feel like I'm learning from the people that live in Abbotsford about the little little places to go. Yeah. Yeah, it's nice.

Awesome. Well, we just did three hours. Oh my goodness. Yes. That's, that did not feel like three hours at all. That's awesome. Well, I was honored to have you on. I think that the information here is incredibly valuable. I hope people take advantage of having a better understanding of how research works and how that interacts. I'm honored to have had you on. Well, thanks for you know what. I think that you did a good job of sort of convincing. And I think that it's, what you're doing is, I think, very commendable in terms of just wanting to get that information out there and do it in a way that it's sort of relatable and understandable for people. So I think that's great. Absolutely. I think it's so important to hear from people like yourself who don't

often get heard by a large audience about really important things that we really miss out on. And so it was an honor to have you on. Thank you so much for taking the time. Thanks, Aaron. So, you know, I'm going to be able to be. You know, Thank you.