Criminal law is a well known section of law that covers crime defense and prosecution. This law covers the statutes and the rules that were written by state legislators and congress dealing with any criminal activity that causes harm to the general public with penalties. Criminal justice, on the other hand, is the system of law or government institution that deals with maintains social control, mitigates and deters crime or authorizing those who infringe the law with criminal sentence and psychiatric therapy efforts. This paper aims to study and summarize the research of an original paper in criminal justice.
There are a few research methods that have been used for research in making of the criminal justice journal articles. These research methods include quantitative, descriptive, Correlation, Experimental, Ex post Facto or Survey research (Vito, Kunselman, & Tewksbury, 2008). The aim of quantitative research is to establish the association between two different entities in a population. The designs of a Quantitative research are either descriptive where the subject is only measured once or experimental where the subject is measured before and after the experiment. Descriptive research deals with collection of data to test a hypothesis and the data is collected through questionnaires. Correlational research is used to collect information of the relationship between two variables. For example, is there a link between age and growth of crime in a region? Experimental research conducted by a hypothesis stating an expected relationship between two or more variables. An experiment is conducted in order to confirm or disconfirm a hypothesis. Ex Post Facto research is a systematic empirical inquiry where the researcher does not have any control to the independent variables. This is because these variables may have already occurred or are inherent and not manipulated. The larger portion of this research covers any form of measurement that involves asking questions of respondent. This can range from a straightforward paper and pen feedback to intensive one on one interview. ( Introduction to Quantitative Research - Dr. A.G. Picciano)
Several criminal justice or criminology peer-reviewed journal articles that include quantitative research have been written. An example of search a research paper is the Race, Space, and Violence: Exploring Spatial Dependence and structural Covariates of White and Black Violent Crimes in Us Counties. The objective of this paper was to join the literature on spatial examination with research, testing the racial difference hypothesis by exploring the degree in which claims of racial difference are susceptible to the spatial livelihood of community structure and crime (Michael & Casey, 2012)
In the research of this paper, several methods of research were used. By using the 1999-2001 count-arrest data, several unrelated regression data models, spatial lag model and geographically weighted analyses. This method were used in order to evaluate the level of racial similarity and differences across these different modeling procedures, to compare the impact of spatial dependence on violent crime across racial groups and lastly to investigate spatial heterogeneity in relation to the macro-structural uniqueness and violent crime. These models used touched different types of research methodologies (Michael & Casey, 2012). Quantitative research method is used in essence that the purpose of this research is to compare the relationship between races in a community. The independent variable is the race while the dependent variable is the crime rate between the races.
Correlational method of research is used in comparing the level of racial similarities and differences across the society. The similarities and differences of the races in the counties were put into test, and through this, the researchers were able to tell which race is more susceptible to the crime under research. Moreover, experimental research was used in the evaluating the impact of spatial dependence on violence crimes across the races. Here, a few hypothesis experiments were carried out in order to confirm the hypothesis that many people believe. For example, most people believe that the Black race and the Hispanic race are more susceptible to violent crimes than their White counterpart. Lastly the research involved the Ex Post Facto form of research method. This was used in the exploring the spatial heterogeneity in relation to macro- structural uniqueness and aggressive crimes. This research was aimed to figure out the extent of crime on the interracial offspring or generations. This research seeks to discover if mixing races leads to a lower crime rate or does it increase. The researcher does not have any impact on this, because he does not influence the generation of inter racial children. Therefore, in this research method the researcher may have encountered counties where the rate of interracial birth was high and other counties where it was low (Vito, Kunselman, & Tewksbury, 2008).
Introduction to Quantitative Research - Dr. A.G. Picciano - YouTube . (n.d.). YouTube -
Broadcast
Yourself. Retrieved July 2, 2012, from
Michael T. L & Casey T. H, (2012). Race, Space, and Violence: Exploring Spatial Dependence
and
structural Covariates of White and Black Violent Crimes in Us Counties. San
Francisco Springer science+Business Media, LLC
Vito, G. F., Kunselman, J. C., & Tewksbury, R. A. (2008). Introduction to criminal justice
research methods: An applied approach. Springfield, Ill: Charles C. Thomas.
