Criminology and Penology Study Materials

Chapter 1
Criminology: Definition, Nature, Scope, Methods of Studying Criminology

What Is Criminology?1

Criminology is mostly straightforwardly defined as the systematic study of the nature, extent,
cause, and control of law-breaking behavior. Criminology is an applied social science in
which criminologists work to establish knowledge about crime and its control based on
empirical research. This research forms the basis for understanding, explanation, prediction,
prevention, and criminal justice policy.

Ever since the term criminology was coined in 1885 by Raffaele Garofalo, the content and
scope of the field have been controversial. Critics and commentators have raised several
questions about its academic standing. Some of the more conventional questions include the
following: Is criminology truly a science? Does its applied approach, driven predominantly
by the desire to control crime, inherently undermine the value-neutral stance generally
considered essential for scientific inquiry? Is criminology an autonomous discipline, or does
it rely on the
insights, theory, and research of other natural and social science disciplines, and increasingly
the media and public opinion? Which, if any, of the several theories of criminology offers the
best explanation for crime? Should the different theories of crime causation be integrated into
a comprehensive explanation? As we expand the definition of crime to include harms of
commission or omission that are not defined by law as crime (such as harms by powerful
interests and state agencies), is criminology equipped to study these phenomena, or do we
need to abandon criminology for a more encompassing analytical framework? Answers to
these questions are complex, and they are further complicated by criminology’s
multidisciplinary nature, its unconvincing attempts at integrating knowledge (though see
Agnew’s Toward a Unified Criminology, 2011, for a rebuttal of this argument), its relative
failure to recommend policy that reduces crime, and its heavy reliance on government
funding for research. The complexity of these issues has been further compounded by
increasing globalization, which has spawned crimes across national boundaries, and the
failure of national enforcement agencies to prevent crime’s global effects.

Although criminology’s subject matter is elastic, or flexible, the categorical core components
include: (1) the definition and nature of crime as harm-causing behavior; (2) different types
of criminal activity, ranging from individual spontaneous offending to collective organized
criminal enterprises; (3) profiles of typical offenders and victims, including organizational
and corporate law violators; (4) statistical analysis of the extent, incidence, patterning, and
cost of crimes, including estimates of the “dark figure” of hidden or unreported crime, based
on surveys of victims and self-report studies of offenders; and (5) analysis of crime causation.
Less agreement exists about whether the scope of criminology should be broadened to
include society’s response to crime, the formulation of criminal laws, the role of victims in
1
Source: Extracted from Essential Criminology, Mark M. Lanier, Stuart Henry, Desire' J.M. Anastasia,
Routledge, 4th edition, 2015.
these processes (which is a focus of victimology), and the extent to which criminology needs
to adopt a comparative global perspective.

In the United States, the inclusive term criminal justice generally refers to crime-control
practices, philosophies, and policies used by the police, courts, and system of corrections (in
Europe “corrections” is called penology). Those who study such matters are as likely to
identify themselves, or be identified by others, as criminologists, however, as are those who
study criminal behavior and its causes. Criminology, by contrast, concerns itself with the
theoretical and empirical study of the causes of crime. The two areas are obviously closely
related, but a distinction is necessary.

Is Criminology Scientific?

Criminology requires that criminologists strictly adhere to the scientific method. What
distinguishes science from nonscience is the insistence on testable hypotheses whose support
or refutation through empirical research forms the basis of what is accepted among scientific
criminologists as valid knowledge. Science, then, requires criminologists to build
criminological knowledge from logically interrelated, theoretically grounded, and empirically
tested hypotheses that are subject to retesting. These theoretical statements hold true as long
as they are not falsified by further research (Popper 1959).

Theory testing can be done using either qualitative or quantitative methods. Qualitative
methods may involve systematic ethnographic techniques, such as participant observation
and in-depth interviews. Th ese methods are designed to enable the researcher to understand
the meaning of criminal activity to the participants. In participant observation, the researcher
takes a role in the crime scene or in the justice system and describes what goes on between
the participants. Criminologists using this technique to study crime and its social context as
an anthropologist would study a nonindustrial society. These methods have produced some of
criminology’s richest studies, such as Laud Humphreys’s study of homosexuality in public
restrooms, Tearoom Trade (1970), and Howard S. Becker’s study of jazz musicians and
marijuana smoking in his book Outsiders (1963). Indeed, some such studies are done by
anthropologists, such as Philippe Bourgois’s and Jeff Schonberg’s Righteous Dopefiend
(2009), which is a gripping ethnography of homelessness and addiction to heroin and crack
cocaine on the streets of San Francisco.

Quantitative methods involve numbers, counts, and measures that are arrived at via a variety
of research techniques. These include survey research based on representative random
samples and the analysis of secondary data gathered for other purposes, such as homicide
rates or corporate convictions for health and safety violations. Criminologists using
quantitative techniques make up the mainstream of academic criminology. Perhaps one of the
most illustrative examples of quantitative research is the series of longitudinal studies of a
cohort of 10,000 boys born in Philadelphia in 1945 and followed through age eighteen with
respect to their arrests for criminal offenses (Wolfgang, Figlio, and Sellin 1972) and a second
cohort of 27,000 boys and girls born in 1958 (Tracy, Wolfgang, and Figlio 1990). Each study
seemed to indicate that a small proportion of offenders (6 percent), called “chronic
offenders,” accounted for more than half of all offenses. Other quantitative research methods
include the use of historical records, comparative analysis, and experimental research.
Unfortunately, most quantitative research is not theory driven; in other words, it does not
involve theory testing. So, whether criminology is a science has less to do with whether it
tests theory, and more to do with what the Czech criminologist Miroslav Scheinost (2013)
calls adhering to the responsibilities of criminology as a profession. This involves engaging
in empirical research on phenomena that produce victims, the results of which should
contribute solutions to prevent or reduce the harms suffered, and that we see such “scientific
work as a faithful effort to obtain new valid knowledge by the reliable and verifiable methods
and techniques, as a serious and well-founded interpretation of findings.” However, Scheinost
also points out that the criminologist’s responsibility has to be measured in that he or she
must engage the policy implications of research findings, assessing both their positive and
potentially negative effects: “the criminologist should be fair to himself, be aware of his
thought foundations and he should make an effort not to change these thought principles into
a priori conclusions or even prejudices. . . . Simply said, the matter is whether any science
(and especially social science) should only find the facts or also to evaluate them.”

This leads to the related question, that even if it is agreed that empirical criminological
research should make a difference, does it? Ten years ago longtime criminologist James
Austin echoed the somewhat cynical view that it doesn’t. Indeed, reflecting on his then thirty-
year career in criminological research, Austin laments on the irrelevance of criminology to
influence public policy: “Despite the annual publication of hundreds of peer-reviewed articles
and textbooks proudly displayed at our annual conventions, policy-makers are paying little
attention to us” (Austin 2003, 557). Why is this? Is it because, as Austin argues,
criminologists are deficient in the amount of scientific evidence they have to offer policy
makers, disagree among themselves about their own theories, methods and findings, or are
simply ineffective communicators? The answer is probably something to do with all of these,
although the question of whether the subject is a unified discipline or a cluster of fragments
from other disciplines in an uneasy alliance may lie at the heart of the issue.

Is Criminology a Discipline?

Although strongly influenced by sociology, criminology also has roots in a number of other
disciplines, including anthropology, biology, economics, geography, history, philosophy,
political science, psychiatry, psychology, and sociology (Einstadter and Henry 2006). Each of
these disciplines contributes its own assumptions about human nature and society, its own
definitions of crime and the role of law, its own preference of methods for the study of crime,
and its own analysis of crime causation with differing policy implications. This diversity
presents a major challenge to criminology’s disciplinary integrity. Do these diverse
theoretical perspectives, taken together when applied to crime, constitute an independent
academic discipline? Are these contributing fields of knowledge merely subfields, or special
applications of established disciplines? Alternatively, is criminology interdisciplinary? If
criminology is to be considered interdisciplinary, what does that mean? Is interdisciplinarity
understood as the integration of knowledge into a distinct whole? If so, then criminology is
not yet interdisciplinary. Only a few criminologists have attempted such integration (see
Messner, Krohn, and Liska 1989; Barak 1998; M. Robinson 2004; and Agnew 2011). There
is sufficient independence of the subject from its constituent disciplines and an acceptance of
their diversity, however, to prevent criminology from being subsumed under any one of them.
For this reason, criminology is best defined as multidisciplinary. Put simply, crime can be
viewed through many lenses.

Defining Criminology2
2
Source: Extracted from Criminology, Tim Newburn, Routledge, 2017.
Criminology is a complex subject which has a number of historical roots and, as we will see,
a number of quite different approaches in its contemporary guise. On this basis, coming up
with a definition of our subject matter is almost not only a difficult task but, quite probably,
an impossible one. However, in order to bring a tiny bit more certainty to this rather uncertain
terrain, I will borrow an approach to our subject matter first offered by one of the towering
figures of twentieth-century criminology.

Edwin Sutherland defined criminology as the study of the making of laws, the breaking of
laws, and of society’s reaction to the breaking of laws. Whilst this is by no means a
comprehensive definition of criminology – criminologists may be interested, for example, in
various forms of behaviour that do not involve the breaking of laws but, nevertheless, bring
forth some form of social sanction – it does help point us in the direction of what are arguably
the three great tributaries that make up the subject:

 The study of crime.

 The study of those who commit crime.

 The study of the criminal justice and penal systems.

Sutherland (1937) went on to argue that the ‘objective of criminology is the development of a
body of general and verified principles and of other types of knowledge regarding the process
of law, crime, and treatment or prevention’. Now, having indicated that this is the general
approach that informs much of what follows in this book, I want to pause and look briefly at
work that is critical of the very enterprise that is criminology. I do so, not because I think the
criticisms that are made are sufficient to make us abandon this project, but because they
should make us think very carefully about the assumptions that underpin criminology and
should make us question the limitations of this particular enterprise.

The critique is associated with what we will come to think of as ‘critical criminology’ and
can be found in various forms since at least the 1970s. Hillyard and Tombs (2004), for
example, argue for a change of focus away from ‘crime’ and toward ‘social harm’ (see also
Dorling et al., 2005; Davies et al., 2014). They do so on the basis of four major lines of
criticism:

 Crime has no ontological reality – The category ‘crime’ has no reality beyond the
application of the term to particular acts. The acts themselves are not intrinsically
criminal. Thus, to kill someone during peacetime may well be treated as murder; to do
so on a battlefield will most likely not.

 Criminology perpetuates the myth of crime – Despite the criticism above, criminology
tends to talk of ‘crime’ as if the category were relatively unproblematic. The
continued attempts to explain the causes of crime are illustrative of this.

 Crime consists of many petty events – A great many ‘criminal acts’ create little
physical or financial harm and often involve no victim.
  Crime excludes many serious harms – Many things which result in fairly sizeable
harm are not dealt with via the criminal law – i.e. are not treated as ‘criminal’. One of
these might be large-scale tax fraud, which is rarely prosecuted.

What is clear from this critique is that criminology’s organising focus – crime – is potentially
a highly contestable and problematic term. In studying criminology this is something we must
try not to lose sight of. It was this, in part, that the well-known criminologist Stanley Cohen
(1988: 46) undoubtedly had in mind, when he said:

“[Criminologists] like leeches, live off a very large body on which they are wholly parasitic.
In the same way that our courts, prisons, probation officers and police ‘need’ crime, so does
the criminologist. The gap, though, between the real world of crime and the artificial world of
criminology is enormous. One reason for this is that the mere existence of something called
criminology perpetuates the illusion that one can have a general theory of crime causation.”

What Is Crime? Legal Definition3

Since the eighteenth century, the legal definition of crime has referred to acts prohibited,
prosecuted, and punished by criminal law (Henry and Lanier 2001, 6). Most commentators
have agreed with Michael and Adler that “criminal law gives behavior its quality of
criminality” (1933, 5). In other words, criminal law specifies the acts or omissions that
constitute crime. Tappan’s classic definition is illustrative. He defined crime as “an
intentional act or omission in violation of criminal law (statutory and case law), committed
without defense or justification, and sanctioned by the state as a felony or misdemeanor”
(1947, 100). Tappan believed that the study of criminals should be restricted to those
convicted by the courts. In fact, “most criminologists have traditionally relied on the legal
conception, which defines crime as behavior in violation of criminal law and liable for
sanctioning by the criminal justice system” (R. Kramer 1982, 34). And “most
criminologists . . . act as if the debate is settled in favor of a ‘legal’ definition” (Bohm 1993,
3).

Other criminologists argue, however, that the legal definition is too limited in scope. First, it
takes no account of harms that are covered by administrative law and are considered
regulative violations. This is not a new debate. More than sixty years ago, Edwin Sutherland
(1949) first argued that a strict legal definition excluded “white-collar crime.” Cruise
passengers who suffer from cruise-related illnesses as a result of poor cleaning practices is no
less criminal than being robbed in the street. Both injure human life in the interest of profit.
Sutherland argued for extending the legal definition of crime to include all offenses that are
“socially injurious” or socially harmful.

A second problem with a strict legal definition of crime is that it ignores the cultural and
historical context of law. What is defined as crime by the legal code varies from location to
location and changes over time. For example, the recreational use of marijuana is now legal
in the states of Colorado and Washington. Prostitution, which is generally illegal in the
United States, is legal in some states such as Nevada and Rhode Island. Gambling is also
often illegal, yet an ever-increasing number of states now conduct lotteries to increase their
revenue, and today many cities have legal casinos. Tappan (1947) acknowledged the cultural
and historical variability of crime in society’s norms but said this is why the law’s precision
3
Source: Extracted from Essential Criminology, Mark M. Lanier, Stuart Henry, Desire' J.M. Anastasia,
Routledge, 4th edition, 2015.
makes it the only certain guide. Others have claimed that the law offers only a false certainty,
for what the law defines as crime “is somewhat arbitrary, and represents a highly selective
process” (Barak 1998, 21). Indeed, Barak notes with regard to crime, “There are no purely
objective definitions; all definitions are value laden and biased to some degree” (ibid.).

Who Defines Crime?

A related issue is who defines the kinds of behavior labeled crime. Crimes are not produced
by legislation alone. Judicial interpretation also determines what is or is not crime. Judicial
decisions can also be appealed, overturned, and revised. Consider Roe v. Wade, the 1973
Supreme Court case that legalized abortion during the first three months of pregnancy (Fiero
1996, 684), and the more recent limitations that recriminalize certain aspects of abortion.
Even where legislators make laws, a significant problem is whose views they represent.

Some critical criminologists argue that criminal actions by corporations often go

unrecognized because those who hold economic power in society are, in effect, those who
make the law. Legislators are influenced through lobbyists and through receiving donations
from political action committees set up by owners of corporations and financial institutions
(Simon and Eitzen 1982). Their influence minimizes the criminalization of corporate
behavior. This was at the heart of Edwin Sutherland’s original concern (1949) to incorporate
crimes defi ned by administrative regulations into the criminological realm.

In short, relying on a strict legal definition for crime may be appropriate study for police
cadets but is sorely inadequate for students of criminology or the thinking criminal justice
professional. The contextual aspects of crime and crime control require serious reflective
study. A more comprehensive approach to accommodate the range of definitions is to divide
them into one of two types depending on whether they reflect consensus or conflict in society.

Consensus and Conflict Approaches

The consensus approach refers to definitions of crime that reflect the ideas of the society as a
whole. It assumes that all members of society agree on what should be considered crime,
such as homicide and rape. Consensus definitions constitute a set of universal values. In
contrast, the conflict approach refers to definitions of crime based on the belief that society is
composed of different interest groups. These various groups are in competition with one
another, and the competition is most pronounced between the powerful and powerless. If
power is defined in economic terms in American society this gap has been widening in the
past thirty years (CBO 2011) and has accelerated since the Great Recession of 2008–2009,
which is dividing American cities (Heavey 2013).

Consensus Approaches

Consensus theorists try to get around the problem of variations in the law by linking the
definition of crime to what was once called “social morality.” They draw on the seminal ideas
of nineteenth-century French sociologist Émile Durkheim ([1893] 1984), who believed that in
the kind of integrated community that preceded industrialization, people were held together
by common religious beliefs, traditions, and similar worldviews. The similarity between
people acted as a “social glue” that bonded them to each other in a shared morality. Thus, the
consensus position states that crimes are acts that shock the common conscience, or collective
morality, producing intense moral outrage in people. Thus, for Ernest Burgess, “A lack of
public outrage, stigma, and official punishment, attached to social action indicates that such
action is not a violation of society’s rules, independent of whether it is legally punishable”
(1950, quoted in Green 1990, 9). More recent supporters of this position claim there is a
“consensus,” or agreement, between most people of all economic, social, and political
positions about what behaviors are unacceptable and what should be labeled criminal. Indeed,
echoing Durkheim, some commentators, such as Roshier, define crime “as only identifiable
by the discouraging response it evokes” (1989, 76). Even this definition has problems,
however. What at first appears as an obvious example of universally agreed-upon crime—the
malicious, intentional taking of human life—may appear less malicious, or even justified,
when we take into account the social or situational context. Closer inspection reveals that
killing others is not universally condemned. Whether it is condemned depends on the social
context and the definition of human life. For example, killing humans is regrettable yet
acceptable in war; it is even honored. Humans identified as “the enemy” are redefined as
“collateral,” and their deaths are described as “collateral damage.” Those governments that
employ massive violent force to overthrow other governments that they define as
“oppressive” consider themselves “liberators.” The deaths are not described as murder, even
though intended. Instead, the killed are described as “regrettable” but “legitimate” targets.
Soldiers have followed “illegal” orders, taken lives, and avoided punishment and the stigma
associated with crime.

Another major problem with the consensus view is the question of whose morality is
important in defining the common morality. If the harm affects a minority, will the majority
be outraged? Is the conduct any less harmful if they are not outraged? Although empirical
research in the 1970s claimed “there is widespread consensus both within and across cultures
concerning the relative gravity of various criminal acts” and that “the ubiquitous agreement
on seriousness rankings is often cited in support of a consensus as opposed to a conflict
model of criminal law,” commentators have since argued that this may be more a reflection of
the methods used to measure consensus than evidence of an underlying normative agreement
on the seriousness of crime (Cullen et al. 1985, 99–100; see also Miethe 1982, 1984; and
Stylianou 2003).

Social Context

Clearly, understanding the social context is the first step toward defining crime. Consider
sexual behavior as an example. Sexual intercourse with a minor, or statutory rape, is
universally agreed to be a crime in the United States—that is, until we consider the social
context. On closer inspection, legally defined rape is not universally condemned. For
example, sexually active boys and girls under the age of legal consent often do not consider
themselves raped. In previous historical eras, adolescents of the same age were often married
and shared the rights of adults. In this same historical era, husbands could not “rape” their
spouses, though they could force themselves on unwilling wives. Whether the physical act is
condemned depends on the social and historical context and on the definition of rape. For
example, if parents give permission to marry, two sexually active teens are no longer
committing “rape,” though their physical actions (intercourse) and circumstances (age) are
the same. Rape laws have historically had a gender bias as well. Young girls have
traditionally been treated much more harshly “by the law” than are young boys (Edwards
1990). The social reaction to sexual activity and prowess continues to reflect gender bias.
However, this gender bias has also been found to harm males.
Furthermore, whether an issue becomes a public harm depends on a group’s ability to turn
private concerns into public issues (Mills 1959) or their skills at moral entrepreneurship
(Becker [1963] 1973). This is the ability to whip up moral consensus around an issue that
affects some individuals or a minority and to recruit support from the majority by convincing
them it is in their interest to support the issue too. Creating a public harm often involves
identifying and signifying offensive behavior and then attempting to influence legislators to
ban it officially. Becker argued that behavior that is unacceptable in society depends on what
people first label unacceptable and whether they can successfully apply the label to those
designated “offenders.” For example, prior to the 1930s, smoking marijuana in the United
States was generally acceptable. Intensive government agency efforts, particularly by the
Federal Bureau of Narcotics, culminated in the passage of the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937.
This type of smoking was labeled unacceptable and illegal, and those who engaged in it were
stigmatized as “outsiders.” In this tradition, Pavarini (1994) points out that what becomes
defined as crime depends on the power to define and the power to resist definitions. This in
turn depends on who has access to the media and how skilled moral entrepreneurs are at
using such access to their advantage (Barak 1994; Pfhul and Henry 1993). As the following
discussion illustrates, for these and other reasons the consensus position is too simplistic.

Conflict Approaches

Conflict theory is based on the idea that, rather than being similar, people are different and
struggle over their differences. According to this theory, society is made up of groups that
compete with one another over scarce resources. The conflict over different interests
produces differing definitions of crime. These definitions are determined by the group in
power and are used to further its needs and consolidate its power. Powerless groups are
generally the victims of oppressive laws. In 2012, Denver, Colorado, passed a law banning
“camping” in downtown areas. Violation of the controversial ordinance could potentially
result in a $999 fine and a year in jail (Whelley 2013). Presumably, businesspersons will not
be subjected to this law, but many homeless people will.

In addition to being based on wealth and power, groups in society form around culture,
prestige, status, morality, ethics, religion, ethnicity, gender, race, ideology, human rights, the
right to own guns, and so on. Each group may fight to dominate others on issues. Approaches
to defining crime that take account of these multiple dimensions are known as pluralist
conflict theories. Ethnic or cultural conflict is a good example. From the perspective of
cultural conflict, different cultures, ethnic groups, or subcultures compete for dominance.
According to Sellin’s classic cultural conflict theory (1938), criminology should not merely
focus on crime but also include violations of “culture norms,” that is, behaviors that are
considered standard for a specific cultural group, such as Arab Americans or Asian
Americans. Sellin describes two forms of conflict. The first, primary conflict, occurs when a
person raised in one culture is transposed into a different one. As an immigrant, the person
may follow traditional cultural norms, such as the assumption by those of the Islamic faith
that women revealing bare skin are sexually promiscuous and can be propositioned for sex.
But acting on such assumptions may violate the norms of the host country. Where these
norms are expressed in law, criminal violations occur.

Secondary conflict occurs between groups of people who live in the same geographic area but
create their own distinct value systems. Where these clash, conflict and norm violations
occur. An example of secondary cultural conflict as crime is when the behaviors of subgroups
of society are targeted by laws. For example, some places specifically ban skateboarding and
inline skating that others consider harmless recreational activities (Orlando City Council
2006, Sec. 18A.09). Of course, some police reactions to skateboarders should be considered
criminal, as one Baltimore police officer showed us (see [Link]/watch?
v=1hxOr3q7nrk&feature=related). In other places, skateboarders are permitted and even
encouraged.

When power is determined by wealth, the conflict is considered class based. Analysis of this
type of conflict is founded on principles outlined by nineteenth-century social philosopher
Karl Marx. In Marxist conflict theory, the definition of crime focuses on conflicts that arise in
capitalist society. Crime is rooted in the vast differences of wealth and power associated with
class divisions. Groups that acquire power through political or economic manipulation and
exploitation place legal constraints on those without power. A definition of crime based on
economic interests emphasizes that “crime and deviance are the inevitable consequences of
fundamental contradictions within society’s economic infrastructure” (Farrell and Swigert
1988, 3). Crime is defined as the activities of those who threaten the powerful. Such a view
explains why the crimes of “street” offenders are considered serious, whereas those of
corporate or white-collar “suite” offenders are considered less serious, even though the
financial losses from such white-collar crimes amount to at least ten times the cost incurred
from street crimes (Timmer and Eitzen 1989; Friedrichs 2009). Forty-five years ago Richard
Quinney expressed this position: “Crime is a definition of human conduct created by
authorized agents in a politically organized society. . . . [It describes] behaviors that conflict
with the interests of the segments of society that have the power to shape public policy”
(1970, 15–16). In other words, the definition of crime is a political tool used to protect power,
wealth, and position in a society. Not surprisingly, this power-and-wealth version of conflict
theory has been termed critical criminology (I. Taylor, Walton, and Young 1975). This is
because it criticizes the overall kind of society in which we live and suggests we replace it
with a socialist system.

Critical criminologists also suggest that the harm of crime should become the main reason for
law. Following Edwin Sutherland’s ideas, they assert that the definition of crime should be
expanded to include the socially injurious activities of powerful groups against the powerless
as well as behavior that violates or intrudes upon others’ human rights (Schwendinger and
Schwendinger 1970; see also S. Cohen 1993, 98–101; Lea and Young 1984, 55; Michalowski
1985; Reiman [1979] 2007; and Von Hirsch and Jareborg 1991). Thus, they argue that
criminal harm can come not just from individuals but also from the social contexts of
conditions such as imperialism, racism, sexism, and poverty. The idea of crime as a violation
of human rights has become a major theme of critical humanist criminologists. As Quinney
and Wildeman note, “The notion of crime as social injury, social harm, or a violation of
human rights is, in effect, basic to those who strive to improve the human condition, for it
provides the intellectual and practical tools for the reconstruction of society” (1991, 5; see
also S. Cohen 1993).

Marxist conflict theorists are furthest away from the view that law should define the content
of crime. Instead, they argue that any behavior that causes harm is a crime (Reiman [1979]
2007). Expanding Sutherland’s definition (1949), Michalowski (1985) used the term
analogous social injury, which includes harm caused by acts or conditions that are legal but
produce similar consequences to those produced by illegal acts. For example, promoting and
selling alcoholic beverages and cigarettes (described as “drug delivery systems”), though
legal, still produce considerable social, health, and psychological problems. Other substances
that are illegal, such as marijuana, may produce less-negative consequences. The insidious
injuries produced by the Johns-Manville asbestos company’s knowing exposure of millions to
deadly asbestos dust, in spite of the company’s own research evidence that showed asbestos
has carcinogenic effects (Calhoun and Hiller 1986), would be a good example of producing
“analogous social injury.”

Beyond Consensus and Conflict

Going beyond consensus, pluralist conflict, and critical Marxist theorists, other criminologists
have begun to redefine crime more broadly. One such approach has pluralist leanings, but
instead of seeing established groups as significant, it sees the situational context and its
constituent players as important. Crime is defined as a social event, involving many players,
actors, and agencies. Thus, crimes “involve not only the actions of individual offenders, but
the actions of other persons as well. In particular, they involve the actions of such persons as
victims, bystanders and witnesses, law enforcement officers, and members of political society
at large. A crime, in other words, is “a particular set of interactions among off ender(s), crime
target(s), agent(s) of social control and society” (Gould, Kleck, and Gertz 1992, 4; see also
2001). This broader view of crime highlights the complexities associated with defining crime
by recognizing its socially constructed nature.

Another recent reassessment of the definition of crime, which takes into account the total
context of powerful relations and the situational context, comes from postmodernist-
influenced constitutive criminologists (Henry and Milovanovic 1996, 2001; Arrigo and
Young 1996). Postmodernism is a perspective that rejects claims that any body of knowledge
is true or can be true. Instead, its advocates believe that “claims to know” are simply power
plays by some to dominate others. For example, consistent with the important place given to
power, Henry and Milovanovic see constitutive criminology as “the framework for
reconnecting crime and its control with the society from which it is conceptually and
institutionally constructed by human agents. . . . Crime is both in and of society” (1991, 307).
They define crime as an agency’s ability to make a negative difference to others (1996, 104).
Thus, they assert, “Crimes are nothing less than moments in the expression of power such
that those who are subjected to these expressions are denied their own contribution to the
encounter and often to future encounters. Crime then is the power to deny others . . . in which
those subject to the power of another suffer the pain of being denied their own humanity, the
power to make a difference” (1994, 119).

Perhaps the most dramatic call to expand the definition of crime comes from Larry Tifft and
Dennis Sullivan (2001), who argue that the hierarchical structure and social arrangements of
society produce harm that evades the legal definition and that these harms must be brought
back in. They recognize that doing so will render many contemporary legal modes of
production and distribution criminal, as will many of our criminal justice system’s responses
to crime, based on the harms that they produce. They call for a “needs-based” system of
justice that focuses on the concept of equality of well-being as the objective.

It is clear that criminological approaches to crime have come a long way from the simplistic
idea that crime is behavior defined by law. Recent ideas suggest that far more is involved
than law. These ideas resurrect the central role of harm, the victim, and the context.
Importantly, they even suggest that law itself can create crime, not merely by definition but
by its use of power over others. Together, these definitions express the increasingly broad
range of conceptions of crime that criminologists now share. Even though the division
between consensus and conflict theory is helpful to gain an overall sense of different
definitions, it does not present an integrated approach.

Criminal Justice and Scientific Inquiry4

Introduction

Criminal justice professionals are both consumers and producers of research.

Spending a semester studying criminal justice research methodology may not be high on your
list of “Fun Things to Do.” Perhaps you are or plan to be a criminal justice professional and
are thinking, “Why do I have to study research methods? When I graduate, I’ll be working in
probation (or law enforcement, or corrections, or court services), not conducting research! I
would benefit more from learning about probation counseling (or police management, or
corrections policy, or court administration).” Fair enough. But as a criminal justice
professional, you will need to be a consumer of research. One objective of this book is to help
you become an informed consumer of research.

For example, findings from an experimental study of policing, the Kansas City Preventive
Patrol Experiment, appeared to contradict a fundamental belief that a visible police patrol
force prevents crime. Acting as a consumer of research findings, a police officer, supervisor,
or executive should be able to understand how that research was conducted and how the
study’s findings might apply in his or her department.

Most criminal justice professionals, especially those in supervisory roles, routinely review
various performance reports and statistical tabulations. A continually growing number of
research reports may now be found on the Internet. For example, the National Criminal
Justice Reference Service (NCJRS) was established to archive and distribute research reports
to criminal justice professionals and researchers around the world. Many such reports are
prepared specifically to keep the criminal justice community informed about new research
developments and may be downloaded from the NCJRS website ([Link]). An
understanding of research methods can help decision makers critically evaluate such reports
and recognize when methods are properly and improperly applied.

Another objective of this book is to help you produce research. In other courses you take or in
your job, you may become a producer of research. Probation officers sometimes test new
approaches to supervising or counseling clients, and police officers try new methods of
dealing with recurring problems. Many cities and states have a compelling need to evaluate
services provided to offenders released from prison or jail. Determining whether changes or
existing programs are effective is an example of applied research. A problem-solving
approach, rooted in systematic research, is being used in more and more police departments
and in many other criminal justice agencies as well. Therefore criminal justice professionals
need to know not only how to interpret research accurately but also how to produce accurate
research.

4
Source: Extracted from Basics of Research Methods for Criminal Justice and Criminology, Michael G.
Maxfield and Earl Babbie, Wadsworth, 2009.
Two Realities

Ultimately, we live in a world of two realities. Part of what we know could be called our
“experiential reality”—the things we know from direct experience. If you dive into a glacial
stream flowing down through the Canadian Rockies, you don’t need anyone to tell you the
water is cold; you notice that all by yourself. And if you step on a piece of broken glass, you
know it hurts without anyone telling you. These are things you experience.

The other part of what we know could be called our “agreement reality”—the things we
consider real because we’ve been told they’re real, and everyone else seems to agree they are
real. A big part of growing up in any society, in fact, is learning to accept what everybody
around us “knows” to be true. If we don’t know those same things, we can’t really be a part
of society. If you were to seriously question a geography professor as to whether the sun
really sets in the west, you’d quickly find yourself set apart from other people. The first
reality is a product of our own experience; the second is a product of what people have told
us.

To illustrate the difference between agreement and experiential realities, consider preventive
police patrol. The term “preventive” implies that when police patrol their assigned beats they
prevent crime. Police do not prevent all crime, of course, but it is a commonsense belief that a
visible, mobile police force will prevent some crimes. In fact, the value of patrol in
preventing crime was a fundamental principle of police operations for many years. A 1967
report on policing for President Lyndon Johnson by the President’s Commission on Law
Enforcement and Administration of Justice (p. 1) stated that “the heart of the police effort
against crime is patrol. . . . The object of patrol is to disperse policemen in a way that will
eliminate or reduce the opportunity for misconduct and to increase the probability that a
criminal will be apprehended while he is committing a crime or immediately thereafter.”

Seven years later, the Police Foundation, a private research organization, published results
from an experimental study that presented a dramatic challenge to the conventional wisdom
on police patrol. Known as the Kansas City Preventive Patrol Experiment, this study
compared police beats with three levels of preventive patrol: (1) control beats, with one car
per beat; (2) proactive beats, with two or three cars per beat; and (3) reactive beats, with no
routine preventive patrol. After almost one year, researchers examined data from the three
types of beats and found no differences in crime rates, citizen satisfaction with police, fear of
crime, or other measures of police performance (Kelling, Pate, Dieckman, and Brown 1974).

Additional studies conducted in the 1970s cast doubt on other fundamental assumptions about
police practices. A quick response to crime reports made no difference in arrests, according
to a research study in Kansas City (Van Kirk 1977). And criminal investigation by police
detectives rarely resulted in an arrest (Greenwood 1975).

We mention these examples not to attack routine law enforcement practices but to show that
systematic research on policing has illustrated how traditional beliefs—as examples of
agreement reality— can be misleading. Simply increasing the number of police officers on
patrol does not reduce crime because police patrol often lacks direction. Faster response time
to calls for police assistance does not increase arrests because there is often a long delay
between the time when a crime occurs and when it is reported to police. Clever detective
work seldom solves crimes because investigators get most of their information from reports
prepared by patrol officers, who in turn get their information from victims and witnesses.
Traditional beliefs about patrol effectiveness, response time, and detective work are examples
of agreement reality. In contrast, the research projects that produced alternative views about
each law enforcement practice represent experiential reality. These studies are examples of
empirical research, the production of knowledge based on experience or observation. In each
case, researchers conducted studies of police practices and based their conclusions on
observations and experience. Empirical research is a way of learning about crime and
criminal justice, and explaining how to conduct empirical research is the purpose of this
book.

In focusing on empirical research, we do not intend to downplay the importance of other

ways of knowing things. Law students are trained in how to interpret statutes and judicial
opinions. Historians take courses on methods of historical interpretation, mathematics majors
learn numerical analysis, and students of philosophy study logic. If you are a criminal justice
major, many of the other courses you take—say, a course on theories of crime and deviance
—will add to your agreement reality.

The Role of Science

Science offers an approach to both agreement reality and experiential reality. Scientists have
certain criteria that must be met before they will agree on the reality of something they
haven’t personally experienced. In general, an assertion must have both logical and empirical
support: it must make sense, and it must agree with actual observations. For example, why do
earthbound scientists accept the assertion that it’s cold on the dark side of the moon? First, it
makes sense because the surface heat of the moon comes from the sun’s rays. Second,
scientific measurements made on the moon’s dark side confirm the assertion. Therefore
scientists accept the reality of things they don’t personally experience—they accept an
agreement reality—but they have special standards for doing so.

More to the point of this book, however, science offers a special approach to the discovery of
reality through personal experience. Epistemology is the science of knowing; methodology (a
subfield of epistemology) might be called the science of finding out. This book focuses on
criminal justice methodology—how social scientific methods can be used to better
understand crime and criminal justice policy.

Purposes of Research

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.

Exploration

Much research in criminal justice is conducted to explore a specific problem. A researcher or

official may be interested in a crime or criminal justice policy issue about which little is
known. Or perhaps an innovative approach to policing, court management, or corrections has
been tried in some jurisdiction, and the researcher wishes to determine how common such
practices are in other cities or states. An exploratory project might collect data on a measure
to establish a baseline with which future changes will be compared.

For example, heightened concern over drug use might prompt efforts to estimate the level of
drug abuse in the United States. How many people are arrested for drug sales or possession
each year? How many high school seniors report using marijuana in the past week or the past
month? How many hours per day do drug dealers work, and how much money do they make?
These are examples of research questions intended to explore different aspects of the problem
of drug abuse. Exploratory questions may also be formulated in connection with criminal
justice responses to drug problems. How many cities have created special police or
prosecutor task forces to crack down on drug sales? What sentences are imposed on major
dealers or on casual users? How much money is spent on treatment for drug users? What
options exist for treating different types of addiction?

Exploratory studies are also appropriate when a policy change is being considered. One of the
first questions public officials typically ask when they consider some new policy is how other
cities (or states) have handled this problem.

Exploratory research in criminal justice can be simple or complex, using a variety of

methods. A mayor anxious to learn about drug arrests in his or her city might simply phone
the police chief and request a report. Estimating how many high school seniors have used
marijuana requires more sophisticated survey methods. Since the early 1970s, the National
Institute on Drug Abuse has supported nationwide surveys of students regarding drug use.

Description

A key purpose of many criminal justice studies is to describe the scope of the crime problem
or policy responses to the problem. A researcher or public official observes and then describes
what was observed. Criminal justice observation and description, methods grounded in the
social sciences, tend to be more accurate than the casual observations people may make about
how much crime there is or how violent teenagers are today.

Descriptive studies are often concerned with counting or documenting observations;

exploratory studies focus more on developing a preliminary understanding about a new or
unusual problem. Descriptive studies are frequently conducted in criminal justice. The FBI
has compiled Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) since 1930. UCR data are routinely reported in
newspapers and widely interpreted as accurately describing crime in the United States. For
example, 2006 UCR figures (Federal Bureau of Investigation 2007) showed that Nevada had
the highest rate of auto theft (1080.4 per 100,000 residents) in the nation and South Dakota
had the lowest (91.8 per 100,000 residents).

Descriptive studies in criminal justice have other uses. A researcher may attend meetings of
neighborhood anticrime groups and observe their efforts to organize block watch committees.
These observations form the basis for a case study that describes the activities of
neighborhood anticrime groups. Such a descriptive study might present information that
officials and residents of other cities can use to promote such organizations themselves. Or
consider research by Richard Wright and Scott Decker (1994), in which they describe in
detail how burglars search for and select targets, how they gain entry into residences, and
how they dispose of the goods they steal.
Explanation

A third general purpose of criminal justice research is to explain things. Recall our earlier
example, in which we sought to explain the relationship between type of attorney and
sentence length. Reporting that urban residents have generally favorable attitudes toward
police is a descriptive activity, but reporting why some people believe that police are doing a
good job while other people do not is an explanatory activity. Similarly, reporting why
Nevada has the highest auto-theft rate in the nation is explanation; simply reporting auto-theft
rates for different states is description. A researcher has an explanatory purpose if he or she
wishes to know why the number of 14-year-olds involved in gangs has increased, as opposed
to simply describing changes in gang membership.

Application

Researchers also conduct criminal justice studies of an applied nature. Applied research stems
from a need for specific facts and findings with policy implications. Another purpose of
criminal justice research, therefore, is its application to public policy. We can distinguish two
types of applied research: evaluation and policy/ problem analysis.

Applied research is often used to evaluate the effects of specific criminal justice programs.
Determining whether a program designed to reduce burglary actually had the intended effect
is an example of evaluation. In its most basic form, evaluation involves comparing the goals
of a program with the results. If one goal of increased police foot patrol is to reduce fear of
crime, then an evaluation of foot patrol might compare levels of fear before and after
increasing the number of police officers on the beat on foot. In most cases, evaluation
research uses social scientific methods to test the results of a program or policy change.

The second type of applied research is policy and problem analysis. What would happen to
court backlogs if we designated a judge and prosecutor who would handle only drug-dealing
cases? How many new police officers would have to be hired if a department shifted to
community policing? These are examples of what if questions addressed by policy analysis.
Answering such questions is sort of a counterpart to program evaluation. Policy analysis is
different from other forms of criminal justice research primarily in its focus on future events.
Rather than observing and analyzing current or past behavior, policy analysis tries to
anticipate the future consequences of alternative actions.

Similarly, justice organizations are increasingly using techniques of problem analysis to study
patterns of cases and devise appropriate responses. Problem-oriented policing is perhaps the
best-known example, in which crime analysts work with police and other organizations to
examine recurring problems. Ron Clarke and John Eck (2005) have prepared a
comprehensive guide for this type of applied research.

Our brief discussion of distinct research purposes is not intended to imply that research
purposes are mutually exclusive. Many criminal justice studies have elements of more than
one purpose. Suppose you want to evaluate a new program to reduce bicycle theft at your
university. First, you need some information that describes the problem of bicycle theft on
campus. Let’s assume your evaluation finds that thefts from some campus locations have
declined but that there was an increase in bikes stolen from racks outside dormitories. You
might explain these findings by noting that bicycles parked outside dorms tend to be unused
for longer periods and that there is more coming and going among bikes parked near
classrooms. One option to further reduce thefts would be to purchase more secure bicycle
racks. A policy analysis might compare the costs of installing the racks with the predicted
savings resulting from a reduction in bike theft.

Differing Avenues for Inquiry

Social scientific research is conducted in a variety of ways.

There is no one way of doing criminal justice research. If there were, this would be a much
shorter book. In fact, much of the power and potential of social scientific research lies in the
many valid approaches it comprises.

Three broad and interrelated distinctions underlie many of the variations of social scientific
research: (1) idiographic and nomothetic explanations, (2) inductive and deductive reasoning,
and (3) quantitative and qualitative data. Although it is possible to see them as competing
choices, a good researcher masters each of these orientations.

Idiographic and Nomothetic Explanations

All of us go through life explaining things; we do it every day. You explain why you did
poorly or well on an exam, why your favorite team is winning or losing, and why you keep
getting speeding tickets. In our everyday explanations, we engage in two distinct forms of
causal reasoning—idiographic and nomothetic explanation—although we do not ordinarily
distinguish them.

Sometimes we attempt to explain a single situation exhaustively. You might have done poorly
on an exam because (1) you had forgotten there was an exam that day, (2) it was in your
worst subject, (3) a traffic jam caused you to be late to class, and (4) your roommate kept you
up the night before with loud music. Given all these circumstances, it is no wonder that you
did poorly on the exam.

This type of causal reasoning is idiographic explanation. Idio in this context means “unique,
separate, peculiar, or distinct,” as in the word idiosyncrasy. When we complete an idiographic
explanation, we feel that we fully understand the many causes of what happened in a
particular instance. At the same time, the scope of our explanation is limited to the case at
hand. Although parts of the idiographic explanation might apply to other situations, our
intention is to explain one case fully.

Now consider a different kind of explanation. For example, every time you study with a
group, you do better on an exam than if you study alone. Your favorite team does better at
home than on the road. You get more speeding tickets on weekends than during the week.
This type of explanation— called nomothetic—seeks to explain a class of situations or events
rather than a single one. Moreover, it seeks to explain efficiently, using only one or just a few
explanatory factors. Finally, it settles for a partial rather than a full explanation of a type of
situation.
Each of the preceding nomothetic examples, you might qualify your causal statements with
phrases such as “on the whole” or “usually.” You usually do better on exams when you’ve
studied in a group, but there have been exceptions. Your team has won some games on the
road and lost some at home. And last week you got a speeding ticket on the way to Tuesday’s
chemistry class, but you did not get one over the weekend. Such exceptions are an acceptable
price to pay for a broader range of overall explanation.

Both idiographic and nomothetic approaches to understanding can be useful in daily life.
They are also powerful tools for criminal justice research. The researcher who seeks an
exhaustive understanding of the inner workings of a particular juvenile gang or the rulings of
a specific judge is engaging in idiographic research. The aim is to understand that particular
group or individual as fully as possible.

Inductive and Deductive Reasoning

Inductive reasoning (induction) moves from the specific to the general, from a set of
particular observations to the discovery of a pattern that represents some degree of order
among the varied events under examination. Notice, incidentally, that your discovery doesn’t
necessarily tell you why the pattern exists—merely that it does.

Deductive reasoning (deduction) moves from the general to the specific. It moves from a
pattern that might be logically or theoretically expected to observations that test whether the
expected pattern actually occurs in the real world. Notice that deduction begins with why and
moves to whether, whereas induction moves in the opposite direction. Both inductive and
deductive reasoning are valid avenues for criminal justice and other social scientific research.
Moreover, they work together to provide ever-more powerful and complete understandings.

Quantitative and Qualitative Data

Simply put, the distinction between quantitative and qualitative data is the distinction
between numerical and nonnumerical data. When we say that someone is witty, we are
making a qualitative assertion. When we say that that person has appeared three times in a
local comedy club, we are attempting to quantify our assessment.

Most observations are qualitative at the outset, whether it is our experience of someone’s
sense of humor, the location of a pointer on a measuring scale, or a check mark entered in a
questionnaire. None of these things is inherently numerical. But it is often useful to convert
observations to a numerical form. Quantification often makes our observations more explicit,
makes it easier to aggregate and summarize data, and opens up the possibility of statistical
analyses, ranging from simple descriptions to more complex testing of relationships between
variables.

Quantification requires focusing our attention and specifying meaning. Suppose someone
asks whether your friends tend to be older or younger than you. A quantitative answer seems
easy. You think about how old each of your friends is, calculate an average, and see whether
it is higher or lower than your own age. Case closed.

Or is it? Although we focused our attention on “older or younger” in terms of the number of
years people have been alive, we might mean something different with that idea—for
example, “maturity” or “worldliness.” Your friends may tend to be a little younger than you
in age but to act more mature. Or we might have been thinking of how young or old your
friends look or of the variation in their life experiences, their worldliness. All these other
meanings are lost in the numerical calculation of average age. In addition to greater detail,
nonnumerical observations seem to convey a greater richness of meaning than do quantified
data. Think of the cliché “he is older than his years.” The meaning of that expression is lost in
attempts to specify how much older. In this sense, the richness of meaning is partly a function
of ambiguity. If the expression meant something to you when you read it, that meaning came
from your own experiences, from people you have known who might fi t the description of
being older than their years.

Both qualitative and quantitative methods are useful and legitimate. And some research
situations and topics require elements of both approaches.