Policing Sex Crimes represents a significant and much needed contribution to the research on police investigation. With access to data from 70 interviews, Spencer and Ricciardelli offer a unique opportunity to peer behind the glamorous images of such work in mainstream media, revealing instead a complex picture of how both investigators and victims are often forced to navigate incredibly difficult legal, emotional and psychological terrain.

Laura Huey, Western University

In Policing Sex Crimes, Professors Spencer and Ricciardelli significantly advance our understanding of an aspect of police work that has received insufficient attention. Drawing upon an impressive cross-Canada sample of interviews with officers working in sex crimes units, the authors shine a light on such topics as the increasingly technologized aspect of policing, the ‘victim support’ role provided by officers, and the moral taint surrounding ‘sex crimes’ officers. The concluding chapter is noteworthy for its consideration of this type of policing as a form of ‘dirty work’ that officers undertake on behalf of a society that is eager to ‘do something’ about sex crimes, but which is happy to have unseen others engage in the distasteful, shocking, and psychologically traumatizing realities of such work.

Kevin D. Haggerty, Killam Laureate, Canada Research Chair, University of Alberta