“It’s very dire and it seems to just be getting worse”: How Paramedics and Firefighters Perceive their Role in Dealing with Drug Use and People Who Use Drugs (PWUD)

Abstract of the conference

In this presentation, I examine how frontline paramedics and firefighters understand and experience their roles and responsibilities in the context of responding to drug use and People Who Use Drugs (PWUD). I position these two groups of first responders as central actors in the governance of crime, drugs, and urban poverty (Seim, 2020), providing a socio-criminological analysis of their occupational realities and conceptions of self. In Manitoba, the field site of this study, methamphetamine (meth) use has received an immense amount of media and political attention over the past years, and has affected the occupational realities of public health and criminal justice actors. I analyze how paramedics and firefighters position themselves as caring first responders, while navigating risk, vulnerability, and the consequences of an insufficient public health and social welfare response to drug use, drawing attention to the ‘safekeeping strategies’ these workers use in their everyday work to navigate safety and vulnerability.

Biography

Katharina Maier is an Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Winnipeg. Her research explores issues of punishment with a focus on community-based penalties, drug use, and the intersections between public health and criminal justice logics and responses to social problems. Her work has been published in Theoretical Criminology, Punishment & Society, and Criminology & Criminal Justice, among other venues.