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Part I
Situating qualitative research in criminology and criminal justice
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1
The history and evolution of qualitative criminology
J. Mitchell Miller, Heith Copes, and Andy Hochstetler
Criminology and criminal justice have a rich legacy of qualitative research. Indeed, much of what we know about offenders and the criminal justice system comes from early research using various qualitative designs. Despite an illustrative past, qualitative methods are largely underrepresented in contemporary criminological and criminal justice research and play but a small part in the development of the field today. Recent evaluations of the relative distribution of methods in criminology and criminal justice journals certainly evidence qualitative criminology’s secondary status (Copes, Brown, & Tewksbury, 2011; Tewksbury, DeMichele, & Miller, 2005). Even with this underrepresentation in the literature, qualitative methods are still considered by most to serve essential purposes in studying crime and the criminal justice system, as qualitative criminologists have made significant contributions to the development of theoretical criminology and criminal justice practice in recent years.
Despite representing a small percentage of criminological research, the sheer number of crime ethnographies is far too large to summarize. With this caveat in mind, we seek to provide a modest review of some of the most important theoretical and substantive advancements made by qualitative criminologists in the past few decades. Although we include research that addresses a variety of criminological and criminal justice topics, an exhaustive review is beyond the scope and space limitation of this chapter.
Qualitative criminology in context
Qualitative criminology refers to the collection and interpretation of the meaning of textual, verbal, or real-world observational data to inform about the causes, nature, and consequences of, as well as the responses to, crime. Researchers utilizing qualitative methods place an emphasis on the meanings, perceptions, and beliefs held by participants when collecting, coding, and analyzing data that are almost always rooted in cultural contexts. Although qualitative criminology is often credited for the exploration and description of criminal subcultures and the ethnocentric perspective of offenders, it has also informed our understanding of the criminal justice system’s bureaucratic nature, policies, and practices, as well as their intended and unintended consequences. Accordingly, this chapter focuses on qualitative research that has led to much of our foundational understanding of criminological theories of offending, the culture and functions of criminal justice agencies, the discretionary tendencies of those who work in them, and effective crime prevention and reduction policies and practices.
When studies are dichotomized as either qualitative or quantitative, the categories can sometimes blend, despite substantive differences (Diesing, 1971). For the purposes of this discussion, we distinguish between quantitative methods, which rely on numeric measurements, survey-derived data, experiments, and codified official agency records, and qualitative studies, which rely on textual or visual data, most often in narrative form. Qualitative researchers tend to look for observable patterns and meanings in language or interactions, rather than focusing purely on quantifiable measurements. They may aim for samples representative of a population and, at times, even count appearances of themes or words, but approximation of general thematic patterns from study of participants’ words or observed behavior, rather than statistical general ization, typically is the larger objective. Although qualitative researchers can increase reliability, for example through using multiple coders to determine data regularity, their work is often interpretive.
Qualitative researchers can explore interpretations or observations implementing greater fluidity, mutuality, and depth of interaction with participants than those who analyze official records or conduct surveys with quantitative goals. Per epistemological accordance with the fluidity and progressive nature of social phenomena, qualitative investigators typically do not narrowly restrict the bounds of study and adapt research protocols (e.g., interview guide modification) as their studies unfold. The advantages of this freedom contrast with the constrictions on survey and related variable analytic dependent research, where one must establish parameters early in the process that tend to shrink social reality to operationalized units. Where survey researchers constrain responses a priori, qualitative researchers typically avoid assuming subjects’ responses and prefer free-flowing, participant-generated dialogue. To capture opinions and attitudes, fieldworkers eschew an emphasis on ordinal responses and focus instead on explanations and thick descriptions. It is the participants’ voices that are sought.
Although interview-based research designs offer fluidity in the data collection process, responses typically reflect retrospective, memory-based realities. Much qualitative criminology, however, is practiced in the spirit of naturalistic inquiry oriented toward the collection of data reflective of unfettered social reality. Researchers working in this tradition can capture data in the context of, or close to, the immediacy of crime. Pursuing live-time crime data through observation and interaction with active offenders thus illustrates the concept of social distance, that is the spatial, temporal, and cultural proximity between researchers and participants. Such work often seeks to minimize Hawthorne effects tainting the dialogue and observed behavior that are qualitative data.
The improvisational and mutual analytic approach of constant comparison of what respondents say in interviews or do in natural settings is beneficial to theory development, because researchers can, in a single study, pursue new lines of inquiry as they emerge, or check formulations from earlier interviews in later ones with increasingly in-depth inquiry on a topic of interest. This comes at the cost of sample size, as each participant may not answer the same questions as the others, but there are clear advantages. The collaborative nature of interactions and relatively free-flowing conversational exchanges with participants allows them to pursue their own meanings and relate their interpretations of events and interactions through the linguistic categories that they prefer.
A short, rich history of qualitative criminology
Qualitative research has a rich history in criminology. Oral history methods were an integral part of criminology in its early development in the 1920s and 1930s (Laub, 1984). Many of the most influential studies of crime have resulted from fieldwork and interviews with known offenders or with residents of the poor places where many street offenders lived. Henry Mayhew’s work in the 1840s on the poor and deviant in London foreshadows this approach. By going to parts of the city that elites avoided, Mayhew was able to shed light on the complexity of thought and behavior of the London poor by giving them a voice. Jacob Riis’ photos of how the other half lived provided a portrait of poverty (foreshadowing visual criminology) and reflected the social activist orientation characteristic of much of this early work.
Perhaps the most influential camp of qualitative research was part of the Chicago School of criminology and sociology, which prospered most famously in the first half of the twentieth century. Chicago School investigators were interested in parsing out the relationship between spatial and social organization and crime, vice, and other social ills. Using both quantitative and qualitative methods, they emphasized how the development of cities and the varying levels of organization in neighborhoods contextually influenced community arrangements for living and, subsequently, individual behavior. Chicago’s streets were given center stage in several ethnographies, as investigators relied on a metaphor of the city as an evolving organism and extended this notion to its smallest parts by observing patterns in how individual residents thought and behaved predictably in their cultural environments (Park, Burgess, & McKenzie, 1925).
The geographer Chauncey Harris argued that Chicago in the twentieth century was the most studied city in the world, with crime ethnographies composing a sizeable share of the work he referenced. After ethnographers had mapped Chicago based on ethnic populations and spatial indicators of social problems, they turned their focus to the quality of life in the city’s neighborhoods. Some of these ethnographies aimed at understanding the influence of context on crime’s occurrence and on more specific endeavors, including understanding delinquency, prostitution, gang membership, homelessness, and, even, in other parts of town, the lifestyles of the wealthy.
The Chicago criminologists were most interested in the industrial city, its immigrants and downtrodden residents, and urban social problems (Park, Burgess, & McKenzie, 1925). They were drawn to understanding and bringing to light the goings on and thinking among marginalized and underprivileged populations who were geographically proximate to, but far from the attention of, polite society. Beyond commitment to studying the disreputable, they were influential in many ways, including their community activism (e.g., Chicago Area Project). Such sojourns led to criticisms that qualitative criminologists had a voyeuristic tendency of privileged academics peering into other worlds with the pretense of exotic anthropology. The saving grace is that much of the ensuing research gave voice to people who might not have been heard otherwise, whether they were sex workers, embezzlers, dogfighters, marijuana cultivators, gangsters, street criminals, or other outlaws. Although critics might aptly describe much of early qualitative criminology as the zookeeping of deviants, with inattention to grand theory or policy, they should remember that ethnographers must present people in their natural settings and from their own perspectives, lest participants be represented as abstractions or fixed correlation coefficients.
By participating in daily life as an observer, the criminologist gains a sense of the lives of offenders and those who deal with them regularly. Chicago’s research revealed that offenders often are not social isolates but part of identifiable lifestyles, with blurred boundaries that can be classed and characterized. These early ethnographers revealed that criminal lifestyles served local functions, including organizing activity among offenders and those near them. A related legacy for criminology is found in recognition that criminal lifestyles and identities are associated with local economies, and this often means that they are nested or reflect the activity in criminal subcultures (Levi, 1981; Reuter et al., 1990).
Although some of what Chicago School criminologists learned of ties, neighborhoods, and behaviors were characteristics of particular times and places, the influence of their approach to the study of crime and its sources is apparent and lasting. For example, it may seem a quaint notion to the contemporary criminologist that the lines between ball teams, semi-formal, ganglike playgroups, neighborhood youth clubs, and criminal youth gangs sometimes were difficult for early criminologists to distinguish (Thrasher, 1927). However, youth who belong to today’s gangs are not as criminally organized or dedicated to crime as most casual observers suspect. Moreover, some things among the population of greatest interest (i.e., serious criminals) seem immutable; for example, there is nothing new about the disdain for local informants to police (Miller, 2011) or the leveled aspirations of delinquent youth in neighborhoods that produce many street offenders (Shaw, 1930). No early ethnographer of crime would be surprised that today’s most criminally involved youth see prison or death as potential outcomes of their choices, or by the somewhat contradictory finding that they still, perhaps unrealistically, hope for the best (Brezina, Teken, & Topalli, 2009; Shover, 1996). It probably is a general truth that many offenders seek a reputation for being bad—even to the point of hiding or struggling to justify why they follow conventional norms (Topalli, 2005).
Early work also taught that the context of an area, and particularly the economic prospects and living conditions therein, shapes residents’ ideas and thinking in ways that may be difficult to discern from afar. These ways of thinking make sense to those embracing ideologies and systems that are localized to some degree (e.g., 1980s gangster culture in large U.S. cities, skinheads in East Germany, and football hooliganism in 1990s Europe) but that sometimes have much in common among those placed in similar social and economic positions worldwide. Gangs around the world have similar origins, ways of thinking, and initial organization, but differ by degrees in their institutionalization and activities, in part based on their ability to profit from the drug economy and maintain control over territory difficult for authorities to police (Hagedorn, 2009). Those involved in street culture display similar focal concerns (e.g., respect and retaliation), regardless if they live in Philadelphia, London, or Oslo (Brookman, Bennett, Hochstetler, & Copes, 2011).
Developments in qualitative methods
There are many qualitative studies of crime—far too many to document here, and certainly too diverse to characterize easily. Across the range of subject matter, the textual data used in qualitative research mean that most are better read than presented secondhand anyway. Rather than attempt to summarize or draw what is valuable from such a diverse field, we have chosen to document significant trends among those who have used the methodological approach in recent years, to illustrate important developments in methodology and theory.
Methodological developments
Not a great deal has changed in the techniques for collecting and analyzing qualitative criminological data since the early days of criminology. The basic idea of getting out of the office and talking to people is still the essence of qualitative criminology. Notably, accessibility of high-quality and portable recording technology and personal computing has eased detailed attention to language and analyses of interview and, to a lesser degree, observational data. Very soon, automatic transcription software may surmount remaining technical barriers and glitches, to ease, if not eliminate, one of the most expensive and time-consuming tasks in the qualitative research process (the dreaded or expensive transcribing of interviews). Whereas earlier generations of researchers often had to rely on memory and field notes to capture observations and interview dialogue, today it is more likely to be a matter of direct record. Improved access to archives of electronically stored data also will advance the field, by allowing secondary analyses and data sharing. It is even feasible to imagine, with current technology, software that does some rudimentary coding automatically, or with only a little direction from the investigator.
Qualitative analysis software has become more advanced, allowing coders to have numerous options for tagging data for search and retrieval. With time and resources, it is feasible to effectively manage and warehouse complex codes for hundreds of in-depth interviews. Undoubtedly, the intense focus on language in qualitative criminology in recent years has been aided by technical developments in recording and coding software, in much the same way that developments in statistical analyses have contributed to better understanding of the trajectories and turning points of criminal careers. Nevertheless, the logic of qualitative analysis generally remains the same as when researchers used pasted transcriptions on color-coded note cards. Newer qualitative analysis software developments include ways of visualizing and presenting data and sampling strategies graphically, but, as yet, they have not changed the traditional style of discovering or presenting findings.
Another development that potentially benefits qualitative researchers is advancement in sampling, as illustrated by respondent-driven sampling (Heckathorn, 1997). Investigators use these techniques to reach hidden populations, based on social networks and chain referral. Some investigators have recruited a small number of research contacts, whom they then pay and interview. They give these participants identifiable coupons to pass to friends or others whom they know to share a key characteristic (Curtis, 2010). When recruits show up to interviews and present coupons, investigators pay them, and the recruits become the next interviewed class, with the study...
