Research in criminal justice is very important when studying an issue. In this chapter’s assignment scenario, the Chief of Police has started a task force to identify the highest crime areas in the city. However, he needs assistance in determining the best way to identify the crime areas through research. Today, I will outline the best way to assist the Chief of Police by: identifying the four purposes of research and an example of each; explaining the relationship among the four purposes of research; and indicating which of the four purposes would be best for the Chief of Police to use. Four purposes of research Exploration. Exploratory research is used to obtain more information about a specific problem. It tells use the “what” or “why”
of an issue. Some departments will use the information they obtained from an exploratory study as a general guideline then adjust their future statistics as more time passes. An example of exploratory research is trying to find out why alcohol abuse is more prevalent in college. A person conducting this research could look into the fact that college age students may also be 21 and able to purchase their own alcohol. They may also look at the fact that more college students don’t have constant parent monitoring so they attend more parties. It is through these examples and questions that exploratory research shows why a specific problem takes place. Description. Descriptive research is used to describe an event or issue that took place. The person conducting the research doesn’t imply what took place, but they report what they actually saw. An example of descriptive research is having a person attend another cities gang violence program meeting. The researcher will note what took place at the meeting and the policies that were implemented. They can then report that information back to their own supervisor/city in preparation to adapt a similar plan. That is why descriptive research is based off of visual observations. Explanation. Explanatory research looks at cause and effect situations. This research will try to explain why one thing affects another. You must establish an independent variable and show why a dependent variable is associated to it. This can be explained by using the example of electronic monitoring devices. A person conducting explanatory research might say, “Electronic monitoring reduces prison overcrowding.” The researcher in that example is using electronic monitoring as their independent variable and trying to show how it reduces prison overcrowding, the dependent variable. These cause and effect situations are the foundation of explanatory research. Application. Application research is used to determine how effective a program or policy is. This is done through studying accurate results and compiling data. An example of application research is studying the success and failure rates of individuals involved in the alcoholics anonymous program. If there is an elevated number of failures in the program, the data can lead to organizational/structure changes to make the program more effective. That is why application research is applied to determine effectiveness of programs and policies. Relationship Among Four Purposes The relationship among the four purposes of research is simple: they are all focused on research. Maxfield (2008, p. 36) describes it best by saying, “We conduct criminal justice research to serve various purposes. Criminal justice research, of course, serves many purposes. Explaining associations between two or more variables is one of those purposes; others include exploration, description, and application. Although a given study can have several purposes, it is useful to examine them separately because each has different implications for other aspects of research design.” Best for Chief of Police The best option of research for the Chief of Police is exploration. This type of research will allow the task force to ask questions to the public in order to identify the issues in their area. By reviewing the responses, they should be able to identify which areas in their city have the highest crime rate. The task force can also use their initial research as a foundation to future research. Once they find out what areas have the higher crime rates, they can do further exploratory research to identify specific crimes taking place in that area. It is for these reasons that I feel exploratory research best fits the Chief of Police’s need. As we have discussed, there is very valuable information that can be obtained through research. Multiple types of studies can use one or all four purposes of research: exploration, description, explanation and application. However, for the Chief of Police, the exploration is the best option to identify the high crime rate areas.
A, Braga & D, Weisburd. 'Police Innovation and Crime Prevention: Lessons Learned from Police Research over the Past 20 Years'. Paper presented at the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) Policing Research Workshop: Planning for the future, Washington, DC. 2006. p. 22.
By approaching these ideas with solid research goals and planning, researchers have come up with two basic crime fighting strategies that can increase police effectiveness. The first strategy Community Policing, which addresses immedia...
Adler, F., Mueller, G. O. W., & Laufer. W. S. (2001). Criminology. (4th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.
Hickey, T. J. (2010). Taking Sides: Clashing Views in Crime and Criminology, 9th Edition. New York, NY: The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
White, R., Haines, F., & Eisler, L. (2008). Crime & criminology: An introduction. Don Mills, Ontario, Canada: Oxford University Press.
...hemselves and discuss the issues in society. Criminologists should build stronger relationships with media organizations so they can make the public more informed about effective crime policies with radio interviews, TV interviews and by writing columns in newspapers, etc. The stronger relationship and awareness made from media will influence the public perception towards implementing academically researched crime policies. Overall, the more knowledge the public has about academic approaches to solve crime issues will consequently direct the publics pressure for policymakers to use academic methods to create crime policies that are effective in solving crime issues. Consequently, the more informed the public becomes of the criminological approaches for crime policies will create a stronger relationship with criminologist and policymakers due to the public interest.
Daly, Kathleen, Goldsmith, Andrew, and Israel, Mark. 2006, Crime and Justice: A guide to criminology, third addition, Thomson, Lawbook Co.
Shaw and McKay (1942) focused their research on the rapidly expanding city of Chicago Illinois in the early 1900’s. Cullen and Agnew (2011) stated that the population of Chicago expanded from 1 million people in 1890 to double that size within 20 years. According to Cullen and Agnew (2011) it was in this era of rapid expansion that researches begin to think differently about crime. Cullen and Agnew (2011) stated that the researchers began to think that the understanding of crime may not be found in the studying of an individual criminal traits but the study of the traits of the environment in which a criminal lives and interacts. According to Cullen and Agnew (2011) this led to a question in which researchers thought a possible solution of controlling and explain crime would be found in changing environments and neighborhoods rather than changing people.
What should police be doing at crime hot spots? There are still concern about the effectiveness of hot spot policing, and what police officers should do in order to effectively reduce crime. Because police officer should be spending some time in these places it is essential to know what they should d...
Because of budget constraints, the study only used one beat to collect data on the effects of increasing police patrol. Even though money was an issue, the experiment could have yielded better data by repeating the experiment multiple times to see if the data they collected would be reliable. The experiment also took place during the winter. The report of the study even noted that there was some evidence that crime activity levels declined, just as street activity does, because of colder weather. Although the design of the study contained weaknesses, some of the methods used by the researchers worked well for this type of study. One of the strengths of this experiment was the different methods used to acquire illegal guns in the beat. By using a variation of ways to seize illegal weapons in the “hot spot,” it allowed officers to increase their chances of finding more illegal guns. Using different methods of search also could have led to greater number of potential offenders to know that officers were looking for illegal weapons and refrained from offending. Another strength of the study includes the relatively inexpensive method to try to answer their hypothesis. Increasing police patrol is one of the more inexpensive methods and it did manage to decrease the number of gun crimes and homicide in the
In my undergraduate studies, I endeavored to further my knowledge and understanding up to the more advanced levels and achieved an outstanding result. As I started my CJ studies in the Spring of 2014, I became preoccupied by the systematic trainings that I received in the criminological theories, crime correction, and the relevant laws. I was keen to study for this particular program because I understood how this knowledge can be utilized to reduce and prevent crime to benefit the lower classes of different communities. These experiences helped me to build up a solid foundation to carry out higher-level research in the
http://www.ojip.usdoj.gov/nij. [Internet Website]. "Crime and Place: Plenary Papers of the 1997 Conference on Criminal Justice Research and Evaluation."
Crime Analysis has many benefits to the community. Community engagement, targeted initiatives, strategic use of resources, and data-driven decision-making contribute to decreasing crime. Crime prevention and community satisfaction with police services, while linked to the number of officers on the streets, does not depend entirely on the visibility of patrol officers. Community engagement, targeted initiatives, strategic use of resources, and data-driven decision-making contribute to decreasing crime. So in closing I believe that departments that take the positive elements of foot patrols and combine their efforts with crime analysis that focuses on the time, location, and type of crime, may use the findings to develop strategies to decrease crime and enhance the quality of life in their communities.
This paper is intended to examine ethical issues in Criminological research and criminal justice. This paper will analyze the multitude of ethical concerns, as well as discuss the confidentiality requirements as it pertains to criminological research.
Throughout the research that Zimring provided, he was not able to explain any single type of theory that explains the crime decline in the 1990s. (Placeholder1) Inspector Zimring’s investigation indicates that many factors could have caused this phenomena. In conclusion, it is apparent that in order to understand crime rate increases and decreases, there needs to be expanded, ongoing research and gathering of statistics to explain the causes of past, current and future crime trends.