Jennifer Lavoie

Jennifer Lavoie, PhD, is an associate professor in the Departments of Psychology and Criminology at Wilfrid Laurier University, Brantford, Ontario. She conducts research exploring police responses to people in mental health crises. Her program of research primarily focuses on the design and effectiveness of police de-escalation and crisis response training models, including the development and testing of virtual reality scenario-based training. She has been recognized through Laurier’s Award for Research Excellence (2017, 2020, 2023) and won the Society for Police and Criminal Psychology’s Wayman Mullins Award for a journal article on relational policing approaches (2023). Jennifer currently leads Ontario’s Ministry of the Solicitor General’s commissioned Mental Health and Crisis Response Education and Applied Training Program, a required training program for Ontario police officers.