Criminal Justice and Criminology Research Methods

Peter Kraska, John Brent, W. Lawrence Neuman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780429649264
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Criminal Law
• Index: Law

Criminal Justice and Criminology Research Methods, Third Edition, is an accessible and engaging text that offers balanced coverage of a full range of contemporary research methods.

Filled with gritty criminal justice and criminology examples including policing, corrections, evaluation research, forensics, feminist studies, juvenile justice, crime theory, and criminal justice theory, this new edition demonstrates how research is relevant to the field and what tools are needed to actually conduct that research. Kraska, Brent, and Neuman write in a pedagogically friendly style yet without sacrificing rigor, offering balanced coverage of qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods. With its exploration of the thinking behind science and its cutting-edge content, the text goes beyond the nuts and bolts to teach students how to competently critique as well as create research-based knowledge.

This book is suitable for undergraduate and early graduate students in US and global Criminology, Criminal Justice, and Justice Studies programs, as well as for senior scholars concerned with incorporating the latest mixed-methods approaches into their research.

Part 1

Disciplinary, Theoretical, and Philosophical Foundations

The first three chapters answer some basic questions about knowledge, its construction, and its use within crime and justice studies. The discussion revolves around central questions: What do we study and why? How do we know what we know? What are the best ways to generate valid, reliable, and legitimate knowledge?

These first three chapters are extremely important. The rest focus on how we research—techniques of the research process—and on how to conduct and assess research. Although this information is vital, we must first construct the big picture or road map—one that includes information and ideas about our discipline (what we study and who conducts research), theory (what theory is and why it is essential to research), and philosophy (the various philosophical and ethical issues associated with its production). The aim is to help you more competently, and with a greater level of critical awareness, navigate your way through either producing or consuming criminal justice research. In short, a solid theoretical and philosophical foundation is crucial for developing the necessary skills to critically assess research studies and claims to legitimate knowledge.

These first three chapters, then, outline the larger context of crime and criminal justice research. Our goal is to help educate you about research methods in crime and justice studies as well as how to research and how to apply it properly. Chapter 1 discusses what we research and identifies who the researchers are. It also provides an overview in abbreviated form of how research is conducted. It points out the various reasons we conduct research as well as provides an outline of how the study of research methods is tangibly beneficial to you, the student. Chapter 2 examines the nature of crime and justice research. It details those sources of everyday knowledge that most of us rely on and some of their shortcomings, and then describes the history, standards, and process of social science research. It includes important sections on the dimension of “time.” Finally, Chapter 3 first presents a detailed examination of theory, its role in conducting quality research, and its various types. The second part reviews the three main philosophical approaches available to us for conducting research:

1. Positivist social science
2. Interpretive social science
3. Critical social science.

The differences and similarities of each are presented. We hope this foundational road map serves you well for the remainder of the book.

CHAPTER 1

Criminal Justice and Criminology Research

Mapping the Terrain

Learning Objectives

• Understand the relationship between knowledge and power as it relates to research.
• Define research and identify the four major purposes for conducting a study.
• Identify objects of study in our field and who conducts research.
• Identify and briefly describe various quantitative and qualitative forms of research.
• Understand the tangible benefits of understanding and conducting research.

Knowledge, Research, and Power

Welcome to the fascinating world of crime and justice research. This first chapter is designed to orient you to research in our particular field of study, crime and justice studies. Let’s start by looking at how the activity of research fits into the big picture.

The quest for knowledge is a defining feature of human history. Seeking the truth, being liberated from ignorance, and trying to answer that ever-elusive question, “what is really the case?”, underpins nearly every aspect of humankind’s evolution. What we ultimately agree on as being accurate and useful knowledge forms the basis for what we define and view as reality. However, agreeing on the proper methods to search for and validate what is knowledge—such as traditional myths, religious texts, or scientific research methods—has been a source of struggle and conflict for centuries.

The struggle is not over. Today’s headlines demonstrate that large differences still remain over how best to determine what we know. The media dubs one dimension of this conflict the “science wars” or the war on facts.¹ Several issues are illustrative. Are the scientific studies documenting global warming and its causes valid, or are they skewed because of climatologists’ ideological leanings? Should the scientifically tested “theory of evolution” be placed on the same educational plane as the biblically based notion of “intelligent design”? Are recent dramatic drops in reported violent crime in the United States due mainly to social, economic, and demographic factors as explained in numerous academic studies, or are they caused simply by getting tough with law violators, regardless of what the “experts” say?

These questions point to an interesting paradox: as research-based knowledge in our society grows exponentially in both size and influence, so has the level of skepticism about its legitimacy.² As in the past, what we know and how we determine what we know are under serious dispute.

Besides long-standing differences in worldviews (religion versus science), a central factor driving this dispute can be found in the close relationship between knowledge and power. Put simply, knowledge generates power, and conversely, power generates knowledge (see Figure 1.1). Let’s look at what this knowledge/power dynamic entails.

FIGURE 1.1
The Knowledge-Power Dynamic.

The research methods detailed in this book are specifically designed to generate knowledge. Research-based knowledge, if perceived as legitimate and accurate, holds tremendous capacity to influence others. For example, medical doctors assume that the prescription drugs they dispense are safe only because of the research findings generated by pharmaceutical companies (an assumption currently under serious dispute). We assume that the knowledge associated with a drug we place in our mouth is legitimate and we won’t be harmed as a result; that’s power!

Conversely, with regard to power generating knowledge, the government helps to pay for the research and development of new drugs by these companies. The drug companies that develop these drugs are given the responsibility to determine their safety and effectiveness through conducting experimental research. The US government’s and the drug company’s power, therefore, determine what illnesses are targeted, which drugs are developed and researched, and how these studies are going to be conducted, and how the findings are reported. Hence, the government and group companies’ interests—making the largest profit possible, keeping political interest groups happy, and safely treating illness—guide what is researched and how that research is conducted. In other words, their power influences the knowledge generation process (power generates knowledge). This sometimes results in robust and credible research findings; other times drug companies’ have engaged in questionable research practice in order to maximize profits (Hagopian and Marsh 2018).

In today’s information-based society, scientific research methods produce one of our most authoritative sources of knowledge. It consequently wields considerable power and often lies at the center of today’s most pressing issues and conflicts (i.e. knowledge generates power). It is at the same time subject to manipulation by people or institutions that are attempting to wield power to further their own interests (i.e. power generates knowledge).

Nowhere is this knowledge/power dynamic more relevant than in the study of crime and criminal justice. The trends and issues we research are highly contested and loaded with vested interests: the causes and pains of violence against children, the state execution of convicted murderers, terrorism and how to control it, the use and distribution of illegal drugs, mass murder, and the rapid growth in the number of criminal laws. People’s views on these types of topics vary dramatically. Where some see oppression, others see justice; where some see a violation of human rights, others see the upholding of public order; where some see myth and hysteria, others see fact and reality.

Our field of study possesses tremendous potential to shed much needed empirical light on these types of topics and issues. The knowledge/power dynamic, however, instructs us on the importance of generating credible knowledge only through the most rigorous social scientific methods, independent, to the extent possible, of dominant interests. Put in a different way, research holds tremendous power to influence, yet the researcher must be diligent to resist being unduly influenced by those in power.

Research Defined

At its core, then, research is all about producing knowledge. The Old French word recerchier means “an intense search for knowledge.” We’ll define crime and justice research as a collection of social science methods applied systematically to generate knowledge about crime and justice phenomena. This book details numerous social science methods that systematically generate knowledge, including surveys, interviews, experiments, ethnographic field research, existing data, and historical analyses. Consider that at this exact moment tens of thousands of people in our field—practitioners, academics, students, and other interested parties—are using these methods to collect evidence and data about a range of topics and problems. They are, for example:

• Developing and testing theories about the why of crime
• Questioning taken-for-granted assumptions about how to control crime
• Evaluating traditional and cutting-edge criminal justice practices
• Documenting the prevalence of criminal violence in US society
• Exploring the consequences of crime for its victims.

These research pursuits are clearly needed, engaging, and relevant to real-world problems. In the context of the big picture, crime and justice research really does matter.

The Relevance of Research

But why should it matter to you, the student. In our experience, we have found that one of the foremost questions on the minds of criminal justice students when taking a research methods course is why: Why do I have to learn about the process of systematically generating knowledge if I plan on working in the criminal justice field?

PHOTO 1.1
Understanding that research methods can have a real impact on criminal justice, people’s lives, and our overall understanding is critical.

Unsplash, Mitch Lensink, https://unsplash.com/photos/Ismnr6WSHCU

One of our primary goals in writing this book is to demonstrate clearly the relevance of research. We sincerely believe that there are few subjects in a criminology/criminal justice de...