Research Methods in Criminal Justice and Criminology
This document contains English Summary of several chapters of the book Research Methods in Criminal Justice and Criminololgy. This summary can be used for methodology, Criminology and Empirical Research. I finished this course with a 8.9, so can definitely say that this summary will definitely help...
criminology methodology justice rechtsgeleerdheid law in society empirical research
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Summary Chapter 1: The Scientific Method and Criminal Justice and Criminology as Social Sciences
Scholarly journals: designed to teach concepts and techniques needed to critically read and
contribute the body of knowledge in criminal justice and related disciplines
1800 (EU): start of thinking that criminal behaviour is not caused by the supernatural, but is caused
by an individual → Starting two ideas:
environmentalist tradition: human behavior, environmental
biosocial tradition:some people are better at not becoming a criminal than others (atavistic)
Criminology: Understanding causes of criminal behavior
Criminal justice: studying the criminal justice system and crime prevention + treatment
Social and behavioral science: understanding behavioral and sociocultural phenomena
Anthropology: study of humankind
Measuring the murder rates among preliterate populations
Physical Anthropologists: attempts to piece together fossil evidence of the physical evolution
of humans. Interested in physical features and the genetic makeup of the various nonhuman
primates
Cultural anthropologists: specialize in studying the full diversity of human cultures and social
customs as exhibited by people in thousands of human societies, both large and small,
throughout the world
Crimes only exist in literated societies, since crime is a legal concepts and all laws, by definition, must
be written. Assault and death caused by assault do happen in illiterated societies (Jane Goodall,
Chimpanzees).
Literated societies: Death report, lower homicide level
Illiterated societies: asking relatives in order to find out what has happened, higher homicide level
Economics: study of all economic processes (micro, macro)
Relationships between the rising of the price of a product and admissions to hospital emergency
rooms - deterrent effects of allowing private citizens to carry concealed weapons
Geography: Earth measurement - how politically drawn boundaries impact and are affected by
features of the earth. Heavy reliance on maps.
Geology: studies physical features of the earth and the formation of those features
meteorology: studies the earth’s weather patterns.
Cultural geography is immediately related to social sciences
Cartographic criminology: geographic mapping in the field of criminology, a big increase of efficiency
due to GPS
History: The first social science - Learning from an account or a written record.
Prehistory: The times before History started, people were not able to write
More focussing on the cause of unique events, rather than on categories of events.
Philosophy: efforts to understand the meaning of life, the nature of good and evil, the breadth and
limits of human knowledge. The foundation upon which all science has been built. Provides the
primary basis within which research on the proper role of the criminal justice system in people’s lives
and the nature of free will and personal responsibility under the law can be undertaken.
,Political Science: studies all types of governments and the political forces that drive them, analyzes
voting patterns etc. Uses Criminal Science as a guide to legislative decision making.
Psychology: study of the mind - study of behavior and the cognitive processes underlying it.
experimental psychology
comparative psychology
Psychology acts as an explanation of criminal behavior, due to variety of personality traits.
Social work: helping the poor, disabled and otherwise disadvantaged maintain a quality life. Major
practical orientation.
Sociology: study of human societies and social relationships. Today, sociology is the study of social
behavior, social institutions, and societies in general. Industrial societies, but now nonindustrial
societies. Much of the research in criminology and criminal justice is conducted by sociologists.
Education:studying the process of acquiring and transmitting knowledge and facilitating learning,
usually in an academic setting. Same research methods as social sciences.
Psychiatry: correction of the mind. Involves efforts to treat persons with mental illnesses.
Public Health: closely allied to medicine. studying the health of large populations.
Journalism: collect social science data in the form of public opinion surveys. Impacts the social
science community.
Business: survey research.
Scientific method: the methodological rules and assumptions that practitioners should use in order
for their science to be truly scientific. 7 Characters:
1. Empiricism
All scientific knowledge ultimately rests on what can be perceived through senses. Everything
should be at least conceivably empirical.
2. Verifiability
the assumption that we can use our own empirical observations to confirm or refute the
empirical observations made by others and that they can check ours. This is achieved
through replication.
3. Cumulativeness
The fact that scientist do not start from nothing. they find out what others have already
learned and attempt to add a bit more to this ever growing knowledge. Research findings are
timeless.
4. Self correcting
When errors in observations are made, sooner or later the mistakes will be identified.
All statements open for further investigation.
5. Determinism
any explanation given for a phenomenon must entail only empirical, as supposed to
supernatural, factors. No free will.
1. determinism is an unprovable assumption
2. even when made, the assumption does not deny that humans make choices
b. Ethical and Ideological Neutrality (Value Free)
scientists should not allow such things as ethics and ideology to influence what is being
empirically observed and reported. How to avoid it:
1. never take scientific results as proof
2. make it multicultural and multi-ideological endeavor
b. Statistical Generalizability
Making your results up by using a larger scale, rather that a small scale of individuals
, Social scientist share what is called the scientific spirit. It reflects more about attitudes than about
rules. Think about: curiosity, persistence and skepticism.
Curiosity: Understanding or the desire to institute changes
Persistence:internally motivated, stubborn obsessiveness
skepticism: dogged resistance to believe something without compelling evidence.
Measurement Questions: determination on how to measure something
Descriptive Questions: to provide a basic picture of the extent and scope of a phenomenon
Exploratory Questions: begin to probe for details surrounding the questions. Involve conduction in-
depth interviews of people affected by some phenomenon.
Causal Questions: that seek to identify one or more factors that actually bring about a
phenomenon.Tricky to answer → many variables.
Evaluative Questions: seek to alter the prevalence of that phenomenon. assessing how well the
intervention actually worked.
Two disciplines rely less on the scientific method:
1. Philosophy: science is built on certain philosophical assumptions. Philosophers often explore
questions that are beyond the scientific realm.
2. History: historians normally address questions that make the scientific method inadequate
for their work. They ask questions about unique events, instead of generalizing about entire
categories of events. They utilize statistics far less than other social sciences.
Summary Chapter 2: Formulating Scientific Questions and Locating Background Research
Variables: empirical phenomena that take on different values of intentions.
constant: neither prevalent nor interesting to study, since they always take the same value or
intensity. The answer on the research question will always be the same.
Age crime curve: the chance that people will be more criminal, depends on the age.
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