| Journal of Community Safety and Well-Being (2026) 11(s1), S9–S11. | https://doi.org/10.35502/jcswb.561 |
Cal Corley∗
Ten years ago, the Journal of Community Safety and Well-Being began as a simple idea jotted down on a napkin, powered by collective optimism, a spirit of collaboration, and a shared belief that better outcomes for communities are achieved when we actively share and learn from one another.
Now a decade later, that nascent vision has evolved into a globally recognized, peer-reviewed, open-access publication that connects researchers, practitioners, policymakers, and community partners across the community safety and well-being (CSWB) landscape in Canada and far beyond. This anniversary is not merely a celebration of 10 years of publishing – it marks a decade defined by connection, insight, and consequential progress.
From its humble beginnings, the Journal’s core mission has been to advance evidence, promote dialogue, and champion multi-sector collaboration. It now stands as a central node in Canada’s community safety ecosystem – a trusted venue where emerging ideas are rigorously tested, refined, and shared in ways that are academically robust yet practically grounded.
At launch, the Journal carried a vision that feels even more relevant today: to create an inclusive online space where research, professional practice, and lived experience intersect. In a rapidly evolving world of community safety, the need to bridge the traditional silos of policing, public health, education, and other human services has never been clearer, and the Journal has become a great place for those perspectives and actionable knowledge to converge.
From the outset, the Journal was built on partnership. As founding publisher, the Community Safety Knowledge Alliance (CSKA) was privileged to support the Journal through its critical first 5 years, helping set a strong foundation. While we believed strongly in its potential, the Journal’s impact has exceeded our expectations, thanks to a remarkable community of dedicated people.
At the centre of this success is Editor-in-Chief Norm Taylor, whose passion and steady leadership have guided the Journal since inception. Norm’s long-standing approach to community safety – connecting research, frontline practice, and community needs – helped forge the Journal’s identity as an authoritative and trusted voice. Alongside Norm, Jill Torigian and her incredible team at SG Publishing, including Heather Seunath, Laura Hope, and Sheila Dietrich, have been instrumental in ensuring that the Journal’s standards remain steadfast and its products superbly well presented.
Their collective efforts have shown that academic, pracademic, and practitioner-focused publishing can be both rigorous and highly accessible. The result is a scholarly platform that is uniquely open and highly responsive to a broad readership’s interest in creating safer, healthier communities.
No celebration would be complete without also acknowledging the “engine room” behind the enterprise: the editorial board, peer reviewers, authors, and readers who keep the conversation alive. Together, this community has built more than a publication; it has built a network of trust and shared purpose that continues to evolve and inspire.
From the very beginning, the Journal’s evolution and CSKA’s own journey have been tightly intertwined. CSKA was created to assist police, public health and other human service providers, and community partners in building and using a robust knowledge base to inform how community safety-related work is organized, governed, and delivered. The Journal emerged as the premier venue where that knowledge could be rigorously tested, openly debated, and widely shared.
Both entities arose from the same conviction: that achieving better outcomes for individuals, families, and communities depends on aligning research, practice, and governance – and on sustaining a commitment to bridging the traditionally distinct fields of policing, public health, education, justice, and other human services. Over the past decade, this shared belief has matured into a symbiotic relationship.
CSKA’s core lines of business – applied research, evaluation, technical guidance, and professional development – regularly generate complex, practitioner-driven questions and applied studies that often become manuscripts for the Journal. The Journal, in turn, provides a platform where those findings reach a wider community of scholars, practitioners, and policy leaders, helping shape public discourse, inform legislation, and support meaningful innovation across Canada and internationally. In this way, CSKA and the Journal have grown together as complementary instruments in the same ecosystem: one focused on generating and mobilizing knowledge, the other on curating, challenging, and disseminating it.
For us here at CSKA, the Journal has become a cornerstone vehicle for knowledge diffusion and impact. Many contemporary CSKA projects now build in Journal outputs from the outset, ensuring that applied research does not sit unread on a shelf (“shelfware”) but instead finds its way into articles that reach influential leaders across the CSWB ecosystem.
This has created a powerful feedback loop. Complex questions arising from police services, municipal governments, Indigenous communities, and frontline human service organizations feed into rigorous, often co-designed, mixed-methods studies. Findings and insights return to the field through accessible reports, policy briefs, interactive learning products, and comprehensive Journal articles. They then inform policy development, refine training protocols, and enhance frontline practice across Canada and, increasingly, around the globe.
As these innovations are implemented, they generate new questions, challenges, and data, which funnel back into our research and into Journal content, sustaining a continuous cycle of learning and improvement that is now characteristic of the broader CSWB movement in Canada.
Looking ahead to the 2026–2027 cycle, this process is already underway. Active research projects – on topics such as integrating artificial intelligence (AI) in policing, evaluating police in-service training capacity, overhauling police recruitment and retention strategies in Canada, and developing new collaborative, risk-driven intervention models – all feature planned Journal submissions as core elements of their knowledge-translation strategies.
The Journal’s first decade is a story of growth in both scale and sophistication. What began as an “idea on a napkin” has become an authoritative resource on high-impact research at the intersection of human services and criminal justice. Its editorial framework has crystallized around its clear mission: to advance knowledge, encourage evidence-based practices, and promote dialogue that supports thoughtful public policy, sustainable on-the-ground practice, and multi-disciplinary collaboration.
As its profile and reputation have grown, so too has the breadth and depth of its content. The Journal now routinely publishes original empirical research, comprehensive literature reviews, social innovation pieces, insightful commentaries, and highly practical notes from the field. These contributions span themes such as risk-driven intervention, Indigenous community safety, mental health and addictions in public safety, equity and social justice, and technology-enabled change.
Strategic partnerships – most notably with the Global Law Enforcement and Public Health Association (GLEPHA), the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police (OACP), among others – have extended the Journal’s reach into leadership circles where evidence-informed decision-making can have significant impact.
A crucial turning point came in 2021, when Niche Technology Inc. became the mission supporter of the Journal. This partnership has ensured long-term stability and expanded reach, enabling the Journal to grow its readership, modernize its digital platform, and connect with new thinkers, policymakers, and practitioners worldwide, all while keeping content freely accessible.
Anniversaries give pause for celebration, but they also provide an opportunity to take stock and set direction for the future. As we mark these near-twin 10th anniversaries, it is tempting to focus solely on what has been built: a respected journal and a network of partners and practitioners for whom multi-sector collaboration and evidence-informed practice are now standard. Yet an equally compelling story lies just over the horizon.
For CSKA, the Journal, and the many leaders they serve, the past decade has demonstrated the immense value of maintaining a shared, open space where rigorous evidence, daily practice, and high-level governance intersect – and where the traditional boundaries between academic research and real-world problem-solving are often blurred. The real achievement is not only in the volume of publications or completed projects, but in the willingness of Canadian police, public health officials, and human service leaders to ask tough questions, surface uncomfortable truths, and ground their answers in solid empirical evidence.
CSKA and the Journal were created to support precisely this kind of bold, evidence-based leadership, and the work that lies ahead suggests their most important contributions may still be in front of them. The next decade is sure to test our systems in new and complex ways: rapid technological change (particularly the integration of AI into critical decision-making), the imperatives of reconciliation, equity, and social justice, and the ongoing challenge of sustaining public trust in core civic institutions.
In that context, the deep alignment between CSKA and the Journal is not a historical accident – it is a foundational element of Canada’s capacity to respond effectively. CSKA will continue to support and execute critical applied research and innovation, while the Journal provides a premium, open, peer-reviewed home for that and other similar work, and more. Together, they help ensure that when leaders across the CSWB ecosystem ask difficult questions, they are met with rigorous evidence, thoughtful reflection, and a community of practice ready to learn, adapt, and grow.
Today, the Journal stands as a distinguished global publication, with engaged readers, dedicated contributors, and collaborators around the world, all sharing a commitment to community well-being. As the Journal celebrates its 10th anniversary, we at CSKA extend our profound thanks to all involved – especially Norm, Jill and her team at SG Publishing, our steadfast early supporters, and Niche Technology for so generously supporting the Journal.
Above all, we thank the readership, contributors, and partners who continue to believe in the Journal’s mission. Ten years ago, the Journal was little more than a hopeful vision. Today, it stands as a testament to resilience, professionalism, and purpose, while CSKA stands as a parallel testament to what can be achieved when those same qualities are harnessed in the service of CSWB. That these two entities have grown together and still pull in the same direction should give us confidence that their most important contributions – to knowledge, to practice, and to the well-being of the communities we serve – may yet be ahead.
None.
The author has no conflicts of interest to declare.
None.
∗Community Safety Knowledge Alliance (CSKA), Port Rowan, ON, Canada.
Correspondence to: Cal Corley, 121 Woodstock Ave., Port Rowan, ON N0E 1M0, Canada. E-mail: ccorley@cskacanada.ca
This work is distributed under the Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. For commercial re-use, please contact sales@sgpublishing.ca.
Journal of CSWB, VOLUME 11, NUMBER S1, May 2026