Research Methods in Criminal Justice – Nonreactive Research

Brought to you by The American Public Safety Training Institute (TAPSTI) www.tapsti.org, this 2 hour session will review the work of Dr. Peter Kraska and Dr. W. Lawrence Neuman and their excellent textbook entitled “Criminal Justice and Criminology Research Methods” (2012, 2nd ed.).  The subject matter for this seminar is Nonreactive Research and this type of research is widely used in crime and justice studies. The main way we do this research is by taking advantage of the huge amounts of data, in many forms, we continue accumulating. The authors of our reference text speak of federal crime statistics (UCR, NCVS), the, "General Social Survey, police and prison records, video-surveillance data, existing self-report data, incarceration trends, drug use statistics, documents concerning prisoners released from death row, and court proceedings documents" as well as, "media articles, Web sites, television shows, roadside memorials, hospital records, census reports, and economic data " (Kraska & Neuman, 2012, p. 206). This seminar explains how to use all the data which your department already has collected for you.