Patrick Parnaby

Patrick Parnaby is an Associate Professor of sociology who studies policing, deviant behaviour, risk and the sociology of stigma. His recent work examined police retirement as a form of “role exit” as well as how retirement impacts officers’ sense of identity.

Along with Dr. Ryan Broll and the Police Pensioners Association of Ontario, Dr. Parnaby has also conducted research on resilience among police retirees. Dr. Parnaby is available to supervise graduate students at the MA and PhD levels.

Keywords: policing, risk, deviant behaviour, stigma

Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED)

Parnaby, P. (2025). The Nature of Stigma: Toward a Sociological Engagement with Evolutionary Psychology. Deviant Behavior, 1–15.

Kudla, D. & Parnaby, P. (2018). To Serve and to Tweet: An Examination of Police-Related Twitter Activity in Toronto. Social Media and Society, 1-13.

Parnaby, P. (2017). A subtle kind of certainty: Market dynamics and symbolic violence in professional financial planning. Pragmatics and Society, 8 (1), 85-106.

Parnaby, P. & Buffone, S. (2013). Darwin Meets the King: Blending sociology and evolutionary psychology to explain police deviance. Canadian Review of Sociology, 50 (4), 412-429.

Parnaby, P. & Leyden, M. (2011). Dirty Harry and the Station Queens: A Mertonian Analysis of Police Deviance. Policing and Society, 21 (3), 249-264.

Parnaby, P. (2011). Health and Finance: Exploring the parallels between health care delivery and professional financial planning. Journal of Risk Research, 14 (10), 1191-1205.

Parnaby, P., & Broll, R. (2021). After 10–7: trauma, resilience and satisfaction with life among retired police officers. Policing : An International Journal of Police Strategies & Management, 44(2), 230–245.

Parnaby, P., & Weston, C. (2020). Understanding The Shift: How Police Retirees Leave The Service. Canadian Journal of Sociology, 45(4), 291–312.