The distributed nature of the Internet requires that security issues be addressed through collaborative efforts within and across various sets of public and private actors. Drawing on nodal governance theory, this article explores one aspect of the role that the general public can and does play in the field of cyber-security: civilian policing of the Internet. In particular, we examine the motives and actions of regular citizens, who use their computer skills to identify, track and collect information on the activities of suspected criminal offenders. Whereas some groups use such information to engage in vigilante acts, the groups that we study work cooperatively with police, collecting information to pass onto criminal justice agencies. We suggest that these collectives and their members are a potentially useful, if under-valued, component of cybersecurity networks.

No abstract

Dealing with emotions is a central feature of everyday police work. This is especially the case in relation to criminal investigation work, in which police investigators must grapple with both their own emotions and those of the victims and families with whom they deal. Despite the importance of emotional labor in understanding criminal investigation work, this aspect of their work remains understudied. This study is based on data from 13 in-depth qualitative interviews with members of the Canadian police services. Within it, we explore how officers engage in emotional labor, as well as its impact on these individuals. Although our results are preliminary in nature, they do reveal how managing emotions according to organizationally sanctioned display rules can affect officers’ well-being, and highlight the need for future research to enable police organizations to deal more effectively with this form of work-related stress.

Police perceptions as to the influence of CSI and similar forensic and/or police procedural television programs on public expectations of the investigative process in the field is the focus of the present study. Through qualitative interviews with 31 members of Canadian police forces, I explore the question of whether police investigative personnel view media representations of their work as negatively influencing public expectations, thereby creating a source of occupational role strain for police officers. What is revealed is that the majority of investigative personnel interviewed have experienced citizen queries and demands attributed to consumption of unrealistic images of police work in television programs. Where a minority of investigators report feelings of frustration due to the role strain associated with having their expert knowledge and work methods questioned, the majority of those interviewed saw such queries as opportunities for educating the public about the realities of policing.

As a masculinist space, 'the streets' present a variety of dangers to homeless women, a fact that has received too little attention within the social science literature. This study utilizes data drawn from interviews with homeless women and service providers in Edinburgh, San Francisco,Vancouver, Montreal and Ottawa, to explore the complex survival strategies that homeless women develop to prevent criminal victimization. Through women's words, we see that gender is understood strategically as performance. Four gender performances are identified and discussed: the 'femininity simulacrum', the 'masculinity simulacrum', 'genderlessness' and 'passing'. We discussed how each of these performances is employed in the pursuit of safety and security in frequently violent and chaotic social spaces.Research on the homeless has consistently demonstrated a link between time spent on the streets and increased exposure to criminal victimization (Lee and . However, what we know significantly less about is the relationship of gender to the risk of criminal victimization faced by the homeless, and less still on how gender-based strategies might be employed to reduce that risk. This oversight is perhaps not surprising: historically, the social scientific literature on urban spaces, particularly in relation to homeless communities has subsumed women within the category of the 'undifferentiated "he" ' (Lofland, 1975: 45; see also Bahr, 1973;Huey and Kemple, 2007).Some recent scholarship has attempted to address this deficiency by exploring the question of how gender structures the lives of homeless women, variously increasing or decreasing their vulnerability to victimization