CRPOI promotes community engaged and participatory action research. We center meaningful engagement with impacted populations as a mechanism to deepen cultures of responsible research, while encouraging knowledge mobilization, especially working to ensure research informs policy and legislative change related to incarceration in Canada.
In addition, CRPOI seeks to promote culture change in research.
Widespread stigmas, social and economic barriers prevent criminalized and incarcerated peoples from meaningfully participating in research that is being conducted about them. CRPOI is committed to encouraging community engaged and community driven research. We provide several leadership opportunities as a mechanism to support positive social engagement for criminalized peoples; this includes leadership through our Expert Advisor Roster, an amazing list of individuals who researchers and ngo’s can reach out to, to participate in research teams, and CRPOI’s National Steering Committee, which includes 8 individuals with lived experience of incarceration who provide thought leadership and direction for the Centre.
In Canada, there is a longstanding history of public and governmental discourses about crime that are rooted in fear, misinformation, stigma, and hyper-individualized focuses. There is very little research about the structural and social impacts of incarceration. CRPOI encourages research teams to adopt structural lenses, and to focus on research that helps Canadian policy makers to understand the impacts and outcomes of incarceration.