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Running head: QUALITATIVE INQUIRY METHODS IN CRIMINAL JUSTICE 1

QUALITATIVE INQUIRY METHODS IN CRIMINAL JUSTICE 8

Use of Qualitative Inquiry Methods in Criminal Justice

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Use of Qualitative Inquiry Methods in Criminal Justice

Introduction

The criminal justice field deals with people and their actions and that is why the best approach to use in studying criminal justice is a qualitative approach. A qualitative inquiry makes it possible for a researcher to understand criminals as well as those charged with the responsibility of ensuring that justice prevails. Qualitative inquiries are ideal for studying criminal justice because they are scientific methods of observation that are used to collect non-numerical data. There are numerous qualitative inquiry methods; however, there are four that are ideal for the study of the criminal justice field. The four methods are ethnography, narrative, phenomenological, and case study.

Ethnography

Ethnography is the most common qualitative research method. The method involves researchers immersing themselves in the target participant’s environment. The main focus of ethnography is for a researcher to understand the challenges, culture, goals, and themes that emerge in a participant’s environment. In the case of criminal justice, researchers get to understand the factors that make crime possible as well as the factors that make administering justice difficult.

Rios, V. M., Carney, N., & Kelekay, J. (2017). Ethnographies of race, crime, and justice: Toward a sociological double-consciousness. Annual Review of Sociology, 43, 493-513.

The publication looks at how the ethnography qualitative research method is useful at revealing, explaining as well as offering solutions for issues that revolve around justice, crime, and race. According to the article, ethnography helps to shed light on the day to day contexts in which law, crimes, and punishment are produced. The article details how effective the ethnography method is useful in crime, justice and law enforcement. The article is appropriate as it captures how ethnography works. It as well details the pros and cons of the qualitative inquiry method. The article is appropriate considering its less than three years old and that it touches on the subject that its of concern.

Doll, A., & Walby, K. (2019). Institutional ethnography as a method of inquiry for criminal justice and socio-legal studies. International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 8(1), 147.

The article focuses on the use of institutional ethnography to help understand activities and the organization of criminal justice. According to the article, the inquiry method was invented by Dorothy Smith, a Canadian sociologist. The article focuses on the analysis of texts and the mapping of textual work in legal and criminal justice organizations. The article reveals how people are governed and ruled by processes in legal and criminal justice organizations. The article is appropriate considering it discusses how institution ethnography can contribute to studies in the fields of social legal and criminal justice. In addition, the article is fairly new considering it was published in 2019. Furthermore, it focused on sociology which is the building block of ethnography.

Narrative

The narrative qualitative approach weaves a sequence of events or phenomena from one or two people to form a cohesive story. Researchers spend their time interviewing individuals, reading documents to understand how a person’s narrative of an event came to be. In the case of criminal justice, researchers get to understand the views of criminals or law enforcers as regards events or activities under study by going through narratives of identified individuals.

Presser, L. (2019). The story of antisociality: Determining what goes unsaid in dominant narratives. The Emerald Handbook of Narrative Criminology.

The article was published in 2019 and focuses on the failure of capturing everything that is said or expressed in dominant narratives in the criminal justice field. The study was done after it was identified that a lot of information goes uncollected or undocumented due to the overlooking of figurative language and other ambiguities. Based on the article, a lot of information is left out during interviews when using the narrative method and this adversely affects studies in criminal justice. Presser tries to find solutions that would make the use of the narrative method more accurate than it is in studies of criminal justice. The article is excellent as it not only captures how the narrative method is used in criminal justice but it also captures the limitation of the method.

Helfgott, J. B., Gunnison, E., Collins, P., & Rice, S. K. (2020). The power of personal narratives in crime prevention and reentry: Process evaluation of the Seattle Police Department’s IF Project. Corrections, 5(2), 65-88.

The article was written in reference to a project that was launched in 2009 in Seattle. The project named the IF project was set up so that the Seattle police department can work with ex-offenders rejoining the community after prison time to prevent crime. The police department sits with the ex-offenders and they receive the narratives of the offenders. The narratives touch on how crime happens in Seattle. The article is appropriate considering it touches on criminal justice as well as the use of the narrative qualitative inquiry method. The article details how the police use the study method to gather information that can help in crime prevention.

Phenomenological

The phenomenological approach involves researchers interviewing participants, visiting places, watching videos as well as reading documents to understand the meanings participants place on phenomena’s under study. To properly utilize the phenomenological method, researchers do not start with a well-formed hypothesis rather they form it at the end of their studies. In the case of criminal justice, researchers get to understand the views of not only criminals and law enforcers but get to understand the perception of victims as regards criminal events or activities under study.

Polizzi, D. (2019). The impossibility of criminal justice ethics: toward a phenomenology of the possible. International journal of offender therapy and comparative criminology, 63(1), 135-153.

The article uses the phenomenological method to collect data that supports the difficulty of criminal justice ethics. Polizzi conducted a study to understand why prison life is hard for majority of people and why ethics seem to be disregarded once one is in the walls of a prison. He interviewed and studied several publications on his research topic. According to him, criminal justice ethics can't exist in prison. For the few incidences where were observed, the offenders’ crimes were not serious and neither was their incarceration. The use of the phenomenological method helps to explain a phenomenon in criminal justice. The article supports how the phenomenological inquiry method can help in the formulation of theories as well as explanations in the criminal justice field.

Durjava, L., Visick, A., & Banbury, S. (2018). Heroin addiction in British prisons: an interpretative phenomenological analysis. MOJ Addiction, Medicine & Therapy, 5(2), 62-67.

The article was published after a study that was conducted in 2018. The study was interested in establishing why there are many heroin users in British prisons. To collect data that would help explain the phenomena the research team used the phenomenological method. They conducted semi-structured interviews with four convicts that were diagnosed as addicts of heroin. Several themes were identified in the phenomenological analysis. One of the themes was that heroin was used as an emotion regulator. Through the study, the research team was able to come up with an explanation of why so many British convicts are heroin convicts. The article is appropriate as it is recently published, it looks at the pros and cons of the phenomenological method and it captures how the phenomenological method can be used for data collection in the criminal justice field.

Case Study

The case study method involves a deep understanding of phenomena or events through the use of multiple data sources. Case studies can either be descriptive, explanatory or exploratory. The method involves researchers going through multiple data sources to identify trends, themes or even theories that can best explain the phenomena under study. In the case of criminal justice, researchers get to understand crime, criminals, law enforcers, victims as well as the justice system by going through several cases and as a result, an explanation or a description of an event can be shared.

Todak, N., White, M. D., Dario, L. M., & Borrego, A. R. (2018). Overcoming the Challenges of Experimental Research: Lessons From a Criminal Justice Case Study Involving TASER Exposure. Evaluation review, 42(3), 358-385.

The publication was in reference to a study that was carried out to determine the impact of Taser exposure. The objective of the study was to offer guidance criminologists in their use of Tasers. The research team used the case study approach and as a result, was able to come up with two conclusions. First, empirical research methods should be more frequent in the study of phenomena that affect criminologists. Secondly, the exposure to Taser is not as harmful as expected to criminologists. The article is appropriate considering it touches on the use of case studies in qualitative research around criminal justice. The article is limiting in that it does not capture the limitations of using the case study methodology to collect data.

Kulig, T. C., Pratt, T. C., & Cullen, F. T. (2017). Revisiting the Stanford Prison Experiment: A case study in organized skepticism. Journal of Criminal Justice Education, 28(1), 74-111.

The article was published in reference to the famous Stanford prison experiment. The researchers were interested in establishing whether organized skepticism should be adopted more in criminal justice studies. The research team went through several articles and cases that touch on the experiment. The team discovered that majority of the studies’ conclusions had widely accepted and embraced the famous experiment’s conclusions. The article uses the case study methodology well however it does not state the limitations of the methodology. The article is appropriate considering it is relevant and that it is up to date; it was published in 2017 and touches on criminal justice.

Conclusion

The use of qualitative inquiry methods can be useful in criminal justice as evidenced by the several articles that were reviewed. The study has proven that the use of a qualitative inquiry approach depends on the event or phenomenon under study. The inquiry methods are useful considering that they helped researchers observe participants as well as events that have non-numerical data.