Pathways to Ruin presents an in-depth examination of individuals deemed as high-risk by the Canadian criminal justice system, elucidating their pathways to crime.

Erin Gibbs Van Brunschot is a professor of Sociology and the director of Centre for Military, Security, and Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary.
Humphrey Tamara :

Tamara Humphrey is an assistant professor of Sociology at the University of Victoria.

"Pathways to Ruin is a timely and authentic addition to the current scholarship on criminal offending across the lifecourse. Gibbs Van Brunschot and Humphrey provide a masterful accounting of the significant early life trauma and triggers that shape the offending trajectories for high-risk offenders. The authors provide a compelling argument for reframing and re-directing responses to serious offenders with provision of more social support, compassion, and humanity earlier in an offending pathway. This book is essential reading for serious scholars and students alike. "

Shadd Maruna, Professor of Criminology, Queen's University Belfast and President, American Society of Criminology :

"Seeking to counter to the caricature monsters presented in ‘true crime’ popular non-fiction, this important new work does what the best social science should always do: explores complicated human lives in their full, complex humanity. This contextualised, life-course analysis suggests that ‘risk,’ resides more in the society we have created than inside any individual bogeyman."