Criminological research: typologies versus hierarchies

Abstract

As others in this edition of Criminal Justice Matters have described, criminological developments in the past few years have been tied to evidence-based policy and to a ‘what works’ agenda. In reality this has seemingly led to a Home Office preference for particular kinds of methods and betrays an assumed hierarchy of valid social research methods. Echoing the Campbell Group and Cochrane collaborations and the advocates of ‘crime science’ who believe that methodologies should incline more to those found within the natural sciences, this has tended to prioritise the use of Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs), large samples, quantitatively based approaches, and quantitatively based systematic reviews. Certainly, RCT as a method is currently promulgated as the ‘gold standard’ of research within Home Office circles, and as a key sponsor of criminological research this has major implications for all researchers within the field.