Historically, “offender”-focused discourses have dominated the field of criminology while overlooking those family members who become subject to justice intervention by virtue of their familial bonds. In this qualitative study, unstructured interviews were conducted with eight nuclear family members of criminalized persons in Ontario and Quebec. Participant accounts reveal that the interviewed family members self-imposed significant moral and legal responsibilities for their relatives following criminal justice intervention and simultaneously experienced negative role re-evaluation driven by feelings of guilt, failure, and self-blame. Participants’ inherent lack of control over their criminalized relatives’ behaviours and the criminal justice system’s decisions exacerbate negative impacts of criminalization on non-criminalized relatives’ self-concepts. This lack of control increases the stress of criminal justice intervention while straining family resources. When relatives are justice-involved for prolonged period, the family becomes stuck in a constant state of stress and uncertainty, which may have lasting consequences on the family if left unmanaged. Criminal justice intervention as a disruptive event then reconfigures the family in ways that often leave lasting impacts on nuclear family relationships. This thesis engages with Boss’ (1999, 2006) theory of Ambiguous Loss to analyze participants’ experiences and demonstrate the consequences of criminalization on various nuclear family members in a Canadian context. To mitigate certain limitations of Boss’ (1999, 2006) theory, criminal justice intervention is first defined as a disruptive event that transforms family members’ known realities into threatening and uncertain environments. This thesis then explores the stress and strain that justice intervention places upon the family and applies the theory of Ambiguous Loss to understand criminalization as a source of ambiguous loss. Further, this thesis expands the scope of Boss’ (1999) theory beyond the experiences of certain populations (i.e. children of incarcerated parents) and discovers the limitations of this theory in the context of criminological research. It also opens the door for future research to apply this theory to criminalized populations.

Leaders of the social justice research movement in school psychology argue that since the inception the profession, school psychology has had social justice as a key agenda item. A closer look at the representation of diverse backgrounds in researchers and practitioners and observations of the impact the profession has had on the education of marginalized groups, one could argue that school psychology has contributed to the oppression of said groups. In recent efforts, social justice has been made a focus (i.e. social justice task forces within National Association of School Psychologists (NASP), efforts of individual school districts and graduate training programs to recruit more trainees and practitioners of color, etc.). However, there is still more to be done when training future and current school psychologist who practice, those who train graduate students, and those who do research. The goal of this study is to inquire if the multi-cultural competence and social justice intervention, the Temple Social Justice Project, impacts self-perception of professional performance with social justice matters including multicultural competence using quantitative research methods. Evidence from the current study indicates that more frequent experiences working with culturally and linguistically diverse communities is a significant predictor of higher self-report ratings of social justice orientation. While self-reflection and learning social justice principles may have helped TSJP intervention participants to conceptualize their roles in schools as allies, increased time spent in practicum experiences working with culturally and linguistically diverse communities appears to be effective at predicting higher multicultural competence and social justice orientations as measured by self-report ratings. Findings align with intergroup contact theory which states that intergroup contact reduces prejudice (Pettigrew et. al., 2011). While coursework and professional development/training opportunities are essential for the purposes of prioritizing social justice and multicultural competence and providing individuals with safe spaces to process their social experiences and come to terms with inequality, the data suggests that efforts to diversify our spaces is one of our strongest tools in improving multicultural competence and social justice. / School Psychology