is criminal justice a social science

is criminal justice a social science

Exploring Criminal Justice as a Social Science: The Interdisciplinary Nature of Crime and Society

1. Introduction to Criminal Justice as a Social Science

At the same time, studies of crime or the criminal justice system cast some subsidiary light on race, sex, and class bias within that system, questions about the decision-making, discretion, authority control, and appeals processes of the auxiliary system being studied. Indeed, we would suggest that the kind of detailed social science that may come from interest in the criminal justice system might make the study of criminal justice one of the integrative subfields within social science in general.

Criminology is distinct from criminal justice but shares a symbiotic relationship with it. At its core, criminology is multidisciplinary in nature. One can define criminology, for example, as the scientific study of the nature, extent, etiology (or causes and origins), reactions to, and prevention of criminal behavior. This field of study examines both the multifaceted nature of crime and the societal responses to crime. Criminal justice, in contrast, is largely an applied social science designed to prevent, control, and respond to criminal behavior. Criminal justice consists of three primary components: police, courts, and corrections, and the activities of each are conducted on the local, state, and federal levels of government.

2. Theoretical Foundations: Understanding Crime and Society

Explaining Crime Social scientists have put forward an enormous number of explanations for why people commit positional crime and what kinds of full financial and non-financial costs accompany their behaviors. Some articles explored almost singularly the possibility that particular kinds of media immersion might lead people to commit acts of positional violence. Other articles enticed readers to take a closer look at the ways in which drug and alcohol intake affected the commission of these same kinds of offenses. Finally, recent work in these journals even garnered significant attention because it suggested that state anti-icing or de-icing strategies might have an impact on the rate of commission of positional murder.

Defining Criminality Paradox breathes more recondite sensibilities into definitions of criminal involvement and causes. Lower-order configurations of crime, criminality, or criminal behavior might include inadvertent shoplifting, thoughtlessly violating a traffic law, speeding outside an interstate highway speed limit. Higher-order criminal behavior escalates to brutalizing domestic partners, haggling street narcotics sales transactions, racketeering organized crime, or manifesting oneself as a white-collar master swindler. Variability and difficulty abound, with many various criminal behaviors existing, some serious, some less so, and neither offenses nor their perceived seriousness levels nor offender involvement motivations are easy to categorize or integrate.

Defining Crime At the most basic level, defining crime might seem simple but turns out to be complex. Drawn from legal philosophy, crime definitions imply legally proscribed conduct that offends some kind of universal moral belief. Legal definitions of criminal conduct involve one of two formats: misdemeanors and, more seriously, felonies. Many tens of misdemeanor and felony definitions exist, illustrating great American value diversity about what should be criminal behaviors. Most jurisdictions punish sexual offenses, homicides, and thefts as felonies—but agreement ends there. Other countries routinely impose the death penalty for many crimes for which Americans do not. Wide economic, educational, gender, ethnic, and racial diversity differences in crime commission may be similarly pronounced. Such variability makes it difficult to accept any conventional structure as entirely satisfactory, no fewer existential, ethical, and identity debates.

Introduction A number of key theoretical concepts underpin the social-scientific study of crime and society within criminal justice, especially within the brand of thinking known as criminological theory. Two disciplines closely associated with the study of crime and society—sociology and psychology—examine such key questions as how and why crime occurs, how criminals imagine themselves and their worlds, and how crime affects society and individuals. Academic inquiry into the nature of crime began in the late 18th and early 19th centuries and thus shares conceptual and methodological foundations with the broader social sciences of sociology, psychology, and criminology. Thus today, criminal justice scholars describe crime, crime causation, and society-crime interfaces, and criminal justice research traditions draw heavily on these conceptual and theoretical social science foundations.

3. Empirical Research in Criminal Justice: Methods and Findings

Empirical research tends to be labor-intensive, time-consuming, and expensive enterprises. In part, this is due to the fact that the techniques used to collect the different kinds of data generate fairly large numbers of mistakes. These errors often result from failures to communicate meanings precisely or accurately, incomplete responses, and concocted ones, self-serving misunderstandings, and other forms of bias. Although the findings of each type of research are somewhat impure, they are not equally dirty, nor have they been collected for the same purpose. The different kinds of data are not intended to answer the same questions, nor have they been designed to do so. Their systematic shortcomings do not make these materials useless, only less useful in some cases than others. They do cast shadows. If anything, these shadows are likely to spark new research ideas by challenging our powers of imagination. After all, judged by a standard applied by Howard Becker, this somewhat grubby material constitutes reliable, relevant, valid, important, and interesting empirical evidence.

What social scientists do: Good science makes use of a variety of research methods. We have already seen that quantifiers largely restrict themselves to the construction and analysis of increasingly detailed statistical data. However, social scientists collect data in a variety of other ways to find things out. They observe the phenomena that they study in “the real world of everyday experience” and focus attention on what happens, and record what they have seen or link other kinds of information. They ask the people whom they study through interviews, surveys, and carefully designed questionnaires. They also analyze the records, the traces, the products, and the remains of what went on in the world that they investigate.

4. Interdisciplinary Perspectives in Criminal Justice

Criminal justice courses are offered in universities and colleges as part of a liberal arts education. They are taught by social scientists and are grounded in research skills and methods. Moreover, each of the three main areas of interest in criminal justice – policing and law, the administration of justice, and the nature of criminal activity – has developed ties to and taken insights from the academic disciplines. For example, the fields of criminology and the sociology of crime have important links to sociological theories of deviance and the sociology of law. They also draw upon insights from social psychology. The police have developed their own research skills while maintaining strong links with the field of sociology. This includes the sociological study of occupations and the sociological examination of deviant behavior. In addition, close links exist between the field of sociology and the research concerns of those who administer justice. Courtroom workgroups and judges’ decision-making processes, for example, are keystones of sociological examination within the field of criminal justice. Indeed, the sociological study of organizations as well as the still-advancing fields of judicial decision making and court reform are vital concerns for the administration of justice.

Because of the complex nature of crime and society, the study of criminal justice requires an interdisciplinary approach. Thus, criminal justice students often take courses in a variety of other fields. For example, it is not unusual for their educational program to include psychology, sociology, political science, history, communications, geography, or economics. Moreover, it is possible and often advisable for their program to include information systems management, computer science, or other such technical subjects. Interdisciplinary training is useful to practitioners in at least four ways. First, it provides for a better understanding of the criminal justice process and the factors that influence it. Second, it enables students to develop improved critical thinking skills by exposing them to other perspectives. Third, criminal justice students can better prepare themselves for their chosen careers if they use their crime and society coursework to develop background in one or more of the other social sciences. Finally, it develops a deeper understanding of the interactions between criminal justice and other important social institutions.

5. Future Directions: Innovations and Challenges in the Field

Ever-increasing social complexity and its accompanying demographic implosion transgress public service norms. Specialized and increasingly privatized treatment services give rise to a possibility of a divided system of criminal justice services depending on who can afford or exert insurance. With this apparent inexorable drift away from normative services, the criminal justice system is in jeopardy of not only losing its amateur policy ‘buy-in’. As functional and normative effectiveness seemingly drift further apart, politicians and seemingly ever-more influential media forget that the criminal justice system should perform an essentially ethical function.

In recent years, there has been growing interest in using technology to support offender behavior change. But technology is also having a pervasive impact across all dimensions of crime and justice. The broad use of digital technologies has created ever new types of fraud and economic crime, while the expansion of transnational communication and transportation networks has facilitated the growth of transnational serious and organized crime. Technology also creates criminal law challenges: where an act occurs, when an act occurs in a world where all time and space are compressed into “the here and now,” and whether concealment can defeat criminal liability. More prosaically, keeping up with the rapid advancements in and distribution of technology continues to challenge the capacity of the police and criminal justice systems.