CJ601

1
Introduction

• CJ601

2
Research in CJ

• Consuming vs. producing research
• Evaluating researchsee example p. 4-5
• Knowledge
• agreement, common sense
• crime victimization and the elderly
• punishment severity and deterrence

3
Research

• Knowledge that is the result of empirical
  research
• Empiricalbased on systematic observation
• Example Differential association

4
Errors in observation

• Inaccurate observation
• Overgeneralizing
• Selective observation
• Adolescent sex offenders and planning skillsmore
  complicated than thought
• Illogical reasoning
• Superstition, gamblers fallacy

5
Politics and CJ

• Controversy over crime
• Liberals vs. conservatives
• Death penalty
• Racial profiling
• War on Drugs
• Guns and crime
• Prisons as country clubs

6
Social patterns

• 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)

7
Idiographic

• Idiographic vs. nomothetic
• Idiographica case study, for example
• Charles Manson
• Serial killers
• Might thoroughly explain a case
• Nomothetictry to explain a class of events.
  There will be exceptions or cases that dont fit

8
Variables

• Attributes are characteristics, quality we might
  use to describe someone
• Variables are logical groupings of attributes
• Gendervariable, attributes are male and female
• Unemployed, work part time, work full time are
  attributes of employment status

9
Variables

• 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?

10
Reasoning

• 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

11
Types of data

• Qualitativedescriptive
• Interviews and observations
• Quantitativemeasuring in terms of numbers
• Qualitative religious
• Quantitativechurch attendance, amount of time
  reported praying, reading religious works, etc,
  self-ratings, ratings of others

12
Crime rates in the US

• 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?

13
Basis for comparison

• 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?

14
Comparison

• 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

15
Policy implications

• 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

16
Implications

• What are the implications for long prison
  sentences?
• 3 strikes and youre out laws?
• In deciding policy what are some other
  considerations besides this research?