Introduction
CJ601
Research in CJ
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Consuming vs. producing research
Evaluating research—see example p. 4-5
Knowledge
—agreement, common sense
crime victimization and the elderly
punishment severity and deterrence
Research
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Knowledge that is the result of empirical
research
Empirical—based on systematic
observation
Example: Differential association
Errors in observation
Inaccurate observation
 Overgeneralizing
 Selective observation
Adolescent sex offenders and planning
skills—more complicated than thought
Illogical reasoning
Superstition, gambler’s fallacy
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Politics and CJ
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Controversy over crime
“Liberals” vs. “conservatives”
Death penalty
Racial profiling
War on Drugs
Guns and crime
Prisons as country clubs
Social patterns
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Search for regularities
Example: most common pattern is that
males kill males, least common pattern is
female-female
Crime in the US tends to be intraracial
There are exceptions to the patterns
The pattern tells us what is more common
Probabilities (odds, percentages for ex)
Idiographic
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Idiographic vs. nomothetic
Idiographic—a case study, for example
Charles Manson
Serial killers
Might thoroughly explain a case
Nomothetic—try to explain a class of
events. There will be exceptions or cases
that don’t fit
Variables
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Attributes are characteristics, quality we
might use to describe someone
Variables are logical groupings of
attributes
Gender—variable, attributes are male and
female
Unemployed, work part time, work full
time are attributes of employment status
Variables
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Sentence might be the variable, attributes
could include fine, probation, jail, prison
Independent and dependent variables
One variable (IV) has an effect on another
(DV)
Does level of supervision (IV) affect
delinquency (DV)?
Other examples?
Reasoning
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Inductive: specific to the general,
observations to pattern
Durkheim (father of sociology)
Deductive: testing a general idea
Social capital and crime
Peer pressure and crime
Types of data
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Qualitative—descriptive
Interviews and observations
Quantitative—measuring in terms of
numbers
Qualitative “religious”
Quantitative—church attendance, amount
of time reported praying, reading religious
works, etc, self-ratings, ratings of others
Crime rates in the US
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Rise beginning in the late 1950s
Continuing into the mid 1980s, began to
level off, with some increase into the
1990s
Declines in the 1990s to the present
NYC, decline in homicide by 2/3 from early
1990s to 2002
Why?
Basis for comparison
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General decline in crime in the US, not
just New York city
International comparisons: crime also
increased and decreased in other
industrialized nations, even though rates
vary from country to country, and our
violent crime rates are higher
Why?
Comparison
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Comparisons force us to look at various
possibilities that might not otherwise be
considered
Ex: Comparisons of crime rates and
incarceration rates, by state or with other
countries
Ex: guns and crime
Policy implications
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Crime more common among the young,
declines with age
Supported by all 3 measures of crime
Interviews of offenders
Longitudinal studies
Common pattern, some exceptions
Cannot be entirely explained by
incarceration
Implications
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What are the implications for long prison
sentences?
3 strikes and you’re out laws?
In deciding policy what are some other
considerations besides this research?