RESEARCH BLOG.

In the wake of sustained protests and calls to defund police forces, cities across North America have been busily engaging in police reform. While this is a development some might applaud, it’s imperative to remember that much of this activity is occurring in a complete vacuum of evidence and policy. There’s little research to suggest that many of the social programs likely to be funded in place of police forces will do much to reduce the social problems that have become poli

The rates of dementia are on the rise as populations age. More than 747,000 Canadians are living with dementia, with the prevalence expecting to more than double every 5 years. Spatial navigation challenges are common among this population, and this puts them at a high risk of getting lost and going missing ( Puthusseryppady et al., 2020 ). In Canada, there has been a reported increase in the number of cases involving a person living with dementia, attributing to approximate

According to the Alzheimer Society of Canada , more than 500,000 Canadians are currently living with dementia, and this number is projected to triple by 2050. In addition, 1 in 5 Canadians has experience caring for someone living with dementia. With these staggering numbers, it has become critical, now more than ever, to raise awareness about the needs of people living with dementia and their care-partners. The Challenge One of the most challenging issues related to care and

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