RESEARCH BLOG.

I am writing this blog in follow up to Lorna Ferguson’s insightful post from January 26, 2021: “We Need Usable National Data on Missing Persons, Now” . As an investigator, I lose sleep over missing persons. Having shared a small part of the story of hundreds of families, I feel the pain associated with each one and feel helpless when there is nothing I can do to resolve it. Even though I have been fortunate enough not to have personally experienced this type of ambiguous loss

Previous research has predominantly examined the risk factors for ‘going missing’ by uncovering various demographic and psychopathological factors that place an individual at high risk for going missing to reduce and prevent these incidents through risk assessments and targeted interventions. Scholarship has attempted to account for some social and environmental impacts, classified as 'push' and 'pull' factors, that may influence a missing event ( Tarling & Burrows, 2004 ).

The following blog features an article summary of a working paper I have with Lorna Ferguson examining police missing persons data accuracy across categories used for risk assessment and determining police response. You will also learn a little about my involvement in this research as a police officer — a unique opportunity for a RCMP officer who is used to investigating and not diving deep into research and evidence-based techniques. The challenges and benefits to embarking

In 2017, a submission to the Government of Canada by the Human Rights Watch (HRW) noted that there needs to be an extensive effort made...

The high number of missing person reports that occur globally each year highlights the need for research in this academically neglected field. In this regard, in Spain, some research is being conducted in collaboration with the Spanish National Centre of Missing Persons (CNDES) dependent of the Spanish Ministry of the Interior. One of the main goals of these initiatives is to generate an empirical body of knowledge which will establish an evidence-informed approach for preven

“Those who have knowledge, don’t predict. Those who predict, don’t have knowledge” - Lao Tzu Risk is the predominate lens through which academics, police practitioners and policy makers view the phenomenon of missing persons. The logic behind using this lens is both simple and deceptive. One version of it - what I’ll call the ‘academic fallacy’ - runs something like this: a. if we can identify those individual risk factors associated with going missing, b. and we can we