Janine Ewen
Janine Ewen, a member of the Global Law Enforcement and Public Health Association, is a public
health professional/Early Career Researcher in criminology who is committed to supporting
marginalised communities locally, nationally and internationally. Janine has supported the Law
Enforcement and Public Health Network since 2016 by presenting at their conferences, developing
consultation work on the policing of vulnerable populations in Europe, and helping to establish and
co-facilitate Scotland’s first gender, safety, and harm reduction programme. Raised in the northeast
of Scotland, she has supported several community-led projects and local charities that help women,
young people, and children, including Grampian Women’s Aid. Janine’s early work focused on
building holistic, trauma-informed support for young people experiencing adversity, including family
violence, harm reduction/drug use, and policing. One of her favourite achievements was developing
a specialist service for children and young people dealing with the trauma of domestic abuse; she
helped to secure funding for support workers and to create a warm environment for children and
young people to express themselves.
Janine’s interest in policing started as a child, with direct experience of the Police Service of
Northern Ireland’s (PSNI) handling of domestic abuse. She then moved to Scotland with her mother
and brother and lived for two years in a women’s refuge in rural Aberdeenshire. Janine participated
in several studies on policing domestic violence, and on the impacts of family violence on one’s life
course; furthermore, she has worked with, presented and trained social workers, lawyers,
academics, police officers, and substance misuse workers to improve public health support for
young people who have experienced trauma. Janine’s experiences also helped Police Scotland to
consider other problems such as breaches of confidentiality as well as safety when in hiding from
perpetrators. A book specifically concerned with children’s experiences of domestic abuse will
feature Janine’s work and is due to be published at the end of 2023. She has worked with Police
Scotland’s Domestic Abuse Taskforce Team and Human Trafficking and Prostitution Unit and liaised
with the Serious Organised Crime Taskforce.
Janine has several qualifications, including a BSc (Hons), MSc, MRes, and an ILM from the Institute of
Leadership and Management. In her recent additional study of Criminology, to complement her
public health background, she received a Distinction. Janine completed further training in social
research methods and gained a Commendation and a Distinction for her work in developing
innovative criminological methods when researching areas impacted by criminal harm from drugs,
urban poverty, and industrial decline. One of her pilot studies is now featured in Professor Maggie
O’Neill’s Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship project entitled ‘Methods on the Move: experiencing
and imagining borders, risk and belonging’. Janine has joined other criminologists in contributing to
an open dialogue and sharing ideas via the ‘Sensory Criminology Blog’, creating an open-source
space and teaching resource for exploring the sensory experience of criminological concerns. Her
main areas of expertise and interest include violence against women (VAW), public health, organised
crime/criminal harm, feminist criminology, and helping young people who have experienced
adversity.
For decades, Janine has worked to support people involved in the illicit economy. In the early 2000s,
Janine witnessed first-hand the manifestations of outer criminal harm from the drug trade in
northeast Scotland and was instrumental in pushing for early harm-reducing and peaceful solutions
amidst ideology and criminalisation. Janine has extensive experience in building public health/health
needs assessments, police and partnership work, projects with local agencies, and setting up non-
police-attendance events with public health/NHS workers (where criminalised people are able to
discuss crimes committed against them). Much of this work has been to prevent people in the
underground economy from relying on, or being taken advantage of by, criminal groups. Janine’s
other early harm reduction projects have included frontline work with NHS Tayside to set up
‘Healthy T’, which was a designated area at T in the Park that promoted wellbeing, sexual health and
guidance, harm/drug use reduction, and the reporting of sexual violence and harassment. Theproject was awarded funding by the Scottish Government. Moreover, Janine has worked
internationally, including undertaking fieldwork in Rio de Janeiro regarding public health, police
violence, and urban change.
Janine has been awarded several scholarships and grants, including from the British Society of
Criminology to participate and present at the Queen’s University Belfast conference on Policing and
Regulation of the Sex Industry in 2019; the Global Health Post 2015 in Stockholm (which featured
members of The Lancet and the World Health Organization (WHO)); and the London School of
Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). In addition, she was awarded an international grant to
attend and present at the International Mega Events and Cities conference in Rio de Janeiro.
Janine has recently been published in the Criminology and Criminal Justice journal and will soon be
the first female scholar to publish a causal claims critique on new quantitative research into illicit
drug markets in the European Society of Criminology journal. Janine has provided advisory
commentary on researching areas impacted by criminal harm and ‘county lines’ drug markets and
developed insider “top-tips” for new students and practitioners working in policing and vulnerability
for Policing Insight. Janine has been invited by SAGE Research Methods to develop new content that
incorporates lessons on the practicalities of research participation and its design, based on the
participants’ experience, that may not occur to the researchers themselves and will soon be working
on new projects. She will become a Co-Investigator alongside two Scottish-based criminologists to
determine the international risks of organised crime as a result of the introduction of two new
Scottish freeports. This work is being supported by the National Crime Agency (NCA) and will
become a published systematic review next year. Janine is soon to work on a new paper on
enhancing the experience of participation through creative methods for young people/adults who
have experienced childhood adversity and trauma. She is also taking time to conduct a research
study on the inequalities of criminology knowledge production in Scotland.
