ETHICS AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE RESEARCH
A. Ethical considerations represent a compromise in criminal justice
research, somewhat subtle and less obvious, but nonetheless extremely important.
II. Ethical Issues in Criminal Justice Research
A. In most dictionaries and in common usage, ethics is typically associated with morality, and both deal with matters of right and wrong.
2. What is the source of the distinction?
1. Although the idea may frustrate those in search
of moral absolutes, what we regard as morality and ethics in day-to-day
life is a matter of agreement among
members of a group. Not surprisingly, different groups have agreed on different codes of conduct. If you are going to do criminal justice research, you should
be aware of the general agreements shared by researchers about what's proper and improper in the conduct of scientific inquiry.
III. No Harm to Participants
A. Balancing the potential benefits from doing research against the
possibility of harm to the people being studied -- or harm to others --
s a fundamental
ethical dilemma in all research.
1. Crime surveys that ask respondents about their experiences as victims of crime may remind them of a traumatic, or at least an unpleasant, experience.
2. Although the fact often goes unrecognized, subjects can be harmed by the analysis and reporting of data.
D. By now, you should have realized that just about any research you might conduct runs some risk of injuring other people somehow.
1. A researcher can never completely guard against all these possible injuries.
2. Yet some study designs make such injuries more likely than others.
3. As a general principle,
possible harm to subjects may be justified if the potential benefits of
outweigh the harm. Of course, this raises a further question of how you determine whether possible
benefits offset possible harms.
IV. Voluntary Participation
A. Criminal justice research often, though not always, represents an intrusion into people's lives.
Moreover, criminal justice
research often requires that people reveal personal information about themselves--information
that may be unknown to their friends
B. A major tenet of medical research ethics is that experimental participation must be voluntary.
The same norm applies to research in criminal justice. No one should be forced to participate.
C. You should be clear that this norm of voluntary participation goes directly against a number of scientific concerns.
2. Often, a researcher conducting observations in the field cannot even
reveal that a study is being done, for fear that that revelation might
what is being studied.
V. Anonymity and Confidentiality
A. Anonymity A survey respondent or
other person being studied may be considered anonymous when the
researcher cannot identify a given piece of information
with a given person.
2. Studies that use field observation techniques are often able to ensure that research subjects cannot be identified
3. However, respondents in many surveys cannot be considered anonymous,
since an interviewer collects the information from a person whose name
address may be known.
4. However, assuring anonymity makes it difficult to keep track of correlated
interviews with sampled respondents.
5. Despite this problem, there are some situations in which you may be advised to pay the necessary price.
B. Other situations that use data collected by other means may similarly make it impossible to guarantee anonymity for subjects.
C. Confidentiality Confidentiality means that a researcher is able to link information with a given person's identity but essentially promises not to do so publicly.
2. A master identification file should be created linking numbers to names to permit the later correction of missing or contradictory information.
3. This file should be kept under lock and key and should be available only for legitimate purposes.
4. Whenever a survey is confidential rather than anonymous, it is the researcher's responsibility to make that fact clear to the respondent.
5. In any event, subjects should be assured that information they provide will be used 6r research purposes only, and not be disclosed to third parties.
Handling your own identity as a researcher can be tricky also.
2. Even when it's possible and important to conceal your research identity, there is an important ethical dimension to be considered.
3. Deceiving people is unethical, and within criminal justice research, deception needs to be justified by compelling scientific or administrative concerns.
A. As a criminal justice researcher, then, you have a number of ethical obligations to your subjects of study.
B. At the same time, you have ethical obligations to your colleagues
in the scientific community.
2. Negative findings should be reported if they are at all related to your analysis.
3. You should avoid the temptation to save face by describing your findings
as the product of a carefully preplanned analytic strategy when that is
4. You can serve your fellow researchers÷and scientific discovery as
a whole÷by telling the truth about all the pitfalls and problems you have
experienced in a particular line of inquiry.
VIII. Legal Liability
Two types of ethical problems expose researchers to potential legal
2. The more common potential source of legal problems is having knowledge that research subjects have committed illegal acts.
3. Or research data may be subject to subpoena by a criminal court.
Since disclosure of research data that could be traced to individual subjects
would violate the ethical principle of confidentiality, a new delimma emerges.
A Certain types of criminal justice studies may present particular ethical
problems in addition to those we have already mentioned.
B. Research Causes Crime Because criminal acts and their circumstances
are complex and imperfectly understood, there is sometimes a potential
for a research
project to produce crime, or influence its location or target. Needless to say, this represents a potentially serious ethical issue for researchers.
C. A different type of ethical problem is the possibility of crime displacement in studies of crime prevention programs.
D. Withholding Desirable Treatments Experimental designs in criminal
justice research can-produce different kinds of ethical questions.
2. Failure to conduct research, even at the potential expense of control
group subjects, would therefore make it impossible to develop new or distinguish
beneficial treatments from those that are ineffective or might actually be harmful.
3. One solution to this dilemma is to interrupt an experiment if preliminary
results indicate that a new policy, or drug, does in fact produce improvements
E. Random Assignment The use of random assignment in experimental
studies raises similar questions.
2. Researchers, however, generally view random assignment as an ethical
procedure for deciding how potentially beneficial (or harmful) experimental
treatments should be allocated among subjects.
X. Promoting Compliance with Ethical Principles
A. But if the professionals who design and conduct a research project
may fail to consider ethical problems, how can such problems be avoided?
B. Professional codes of ethics for social scientists cannot, however,
be expected to prevent unethical practices in criminal justice research
any more than the
American Bar Association's Code of Professional Responsibility eliminates breaches of ethics by attorneys.
XI. Institutional Review Boards
A. Government agencies and non-government organizations (including universities)
that conduct research involving human subjects must establish review
committees, known as institutional review boards (IRB). These IRBs have two general purposes.
2. Second, the IRB determines whether procedures to be used by the project
include adequate safeguards to protect the safety, confidentiality, and
welfare of human subjects.
3. It's safe to assume that most research is subject to IRB review if original data will be collected from individuals whose identities will be known.
B. Informed Consent The norm of voluntary participation is usually
satisfied by informing subjects about research procedures, then obtaining
their consent to
2. Researchers usually address this problem by telling subjects part of the truth, or a slightly revised version of why the research is being conducted.
C. Another potential problem with obtaining informed consent is ensuring
that subjects have the capacity to understand your description of risks,
procedures, and so forth.
2. If you use specialized terms or language common in criminal justice
research, participants may not understand your meaning and thus be unable
D. It is important that you understand how informed consent addresses
a variety of ethical issues in conducting criminal justice research.
2. Secondly, by informing subjects of procedures, risks, and benefits,
you are empowering them to resolve the fundamental ethical dilemma of whether
possible benefits of the research offset the possible risks of participation
E. Special Populations Federal regulations on subjects include
special provisions for certain types of subjects, two of which are particular
important for criminal
justice research÷juveniles and prisoners.
2. Prisoners are treated as a special population for somewhat different
reasons. Because of their ready accessibility for experiments and interviews,
have been frequently used in biomedical experiments that produced serious harm to subjects.
3. Recognizing this, HHS regulations specify that prisoner subjects may not be exposed to risks that would be considered excessive for non-prison subjects.
4. Furthermore, undue influence or coercion cannot be used in recruiting
2. However, since researchers are not always disinterested parties in answering such questions, IRBs are established to provide outside judgments.
3. Also recognize that IRBs can be sources of expert advice on how to
resolve ethical dilemmas
XIV. Trouble in the Tearoom
XV. Simulating a Prison