Integration of individuals with lived experience to improve recruitment within criminal justice research: ‘experience as the best teacher’

ABSTRACT

Research has documented numerous barriers to recruitment of marginalized individuals, including historic exploitation, distrust, and accessibility. Such challenges are commonly observed among racial minorities, unhoused individuals, and individuals with lower socioeconomic statuses. Public health researchers have led investigations on ways to engage hard-to-reach populations, but the nuances of recruiting such individuals within criminal justice research remain less explored – a crucial oversight given the prevalence of these populations within the criminal legal system. While literature has identified barriers unique to these distinct identities, it has not fully explored how intersectional identities may complicate these barriers. To bridge these critical gaps, the current paper addresses the challenges of recruiting individuals with multiple identities within the same study. We discuss how the proposed techniques for recruitment of these populations translate into criminal justice contexts, with particular attention to the ways individuals with lived experience enhance study design, recruitment, and overall integrity.

KEYWORDS:

• Study recruitment
• marginalized communities
• lived experience
• criminal justice
• peer specialists

Introduction

Although substantial research has explored the profound impacts of incarceration on individuals’ lives, less is known about the impacts of short-term detention and arrest. This limited knowledge is alarming given the daily average of 741,900 people detained in the United States (Zeng & Minton, 2021). This research gap results from limited guidance provided in the literature regarding the recruitment and retention of justice-involved study populations. Some areas of research have documented challenges of recruiting and retaining individuals from populations that have been labeled as hard-to-reach, such as minorities, unhoused individuals, and those with language barriers. However, proposed solutions are scant within the field of criminology and criminal justice, in which such individuals are disproportionately overrepresented (see Western et al., 2016, 2017; Fahmy et al., 2022 for contrary). Given the prevalence of such identities within the criminal legal system, researchers should consider more effective methods of engaging severely marginalized individuals to ensure that the information is representative of the system-impacted population.

The current paper presents an account of methods used by researchers to successfully engage justice-involved people from marginalized groups such as Black and Latinx racial identities, those experiencing housing instability, and individuals with compounded distrust in both research and the legal system. This paper details the integration of recruitment considerations endorsed within other fields and discusses their utility within criminal justice research. Most importantly, this article provides novel insights about integrating individuals with lived experience in the criminal legal system into the research team to improve recruitment and ensure participant well-being. Specifically, this paper details the benefits of both directly and indirectly integrating outreach staff with varying degrees of contact with New York City’s criminal legal system.

A brief history of recruitment methods

Historically, minoritized and poor individuals have had limited engagement in research due to communal concerns about exploitation, economic and time constraints, and accessibility. These experiences have led to the underrepresentation of minoritized and impoverished participants within research (Ejiogu et al., 2011). Unfortunately, these concerns are likely exacerbated among such populations given the disparate overrepresentation of people from numerous marginalized groups within the legal system. Among populations of system-impacted individuals, issues of transience, and the added distrust of the criminal legal system may create further barriers to participation in related areas of research.

In recent years, national institutions have begun to address this issue by encouraging active recruitment of individuals from marginalized groups in research studies (Redwood & Gill, 2013). Scholars within public health and biomedical fields have responded by leading efforts to identify and address challenges that accompany the recruitment of hard-to-reach¹ populations. Public health researchers have approached this work by exploring contexts that historically inform engagement (Garza et al., 2017; Otado et al., 2015), and critically examining their own recruitment methods and subsequent participant engagement (Lo & Garan, 2008; Redwood & Gill, 2013). However, while the need for more inclusive research remains evident across many fields of study (Henrich et al., 2010), even the characterization of participants as hard-to-reach has rightfully faced numerous critiques.

¹For the purposes of the current study, ‘hard-to-reach’ populations were characterized as participants who were Black, Latinx, and homeless.

First, researchers assert that while some populations may indeed be ‘hard-to-reach,’ others are ‘hidden’ – resistant to engaging with researchers – due to communal concerns about exploitation, economic or time constraints, a desire to avoid hypervisibility, and lack of access (Shaghaghi et al., 2011). Secondly, whether discussing multiple ‘hard-to-reach,’ ‘hidden,’ or ‘marginalized’ populations, these forms of shared labeling risk homogenizing aspects of identity that may be unique from one group to another (Shaghaghi et al., 2011). Such characterizations risk negating responsive approaches tailored to adequately address both the convergent and divergent needs of these groups. For example, studies have addressed the differing ways individuals of diverse cultural backgrounds may understand (and value) various research processes, like providing informed consent (Walter & Andersen, 2016). Considering this, researchers stand to benefit from integrating complex and knowledgeable insights into study design, recruitment, and overall methodological procedures.

One central idea to improving recruitment is dispelling what Garza et al. (2017) identify as the ‘myth’ of minority unwillingness to participate in research. Indeed, this framing creates a discouraging and potentially harmful relationship, thereby limiting the benefits of research for these communities. To remedy this, some researchers have identified factors that positively contribute to recruitment, consent, and retention, while others have examined barriers that inhibit participation (Ejiogu et al., 2011; Fahmy et al., 2022; Teague et al., 2018; Western et al., 2016). Examples include clearly explaining the value of the research for both the individual and their broader communities, making the language of research more accessible (Otado et al., 2015), reducing personal biases by engaging staff who identify as members of participant communities, establishing collaborative relationships with community members (Parmar et al., 2022), and prioritizing culturally competent research design (Sankaré et al., 2015). Such approaches, along with adequate trauma-informed training, can help reduce fears of exploitation and increase perceptions of alignment between participant concerns and researcher values (Ejiogu et al., 2011). While overcoming barriers to engagement in research is important for any group individually, criminal justice research is tasked with addressing needs unique to multiple marginalized identities that feed individuals into, and result from, legal system involvement.

To date, a plethora of research has been conducted globally to address the needs of different marginalized groups in isolation. For example, international scholars like Walter and Andersen (2016) have sought to understand ethical approaches to conducting research with indigenous people impacted by the Australian legal system. Other scholars have explored the need to revise language related to demographic questions to increase visibility of transgender or gender expansive people in research (Doan, 2016). Still, others have highlighted the specific challenges faced by Spanish-speaking participants when engaging in research (Suarez-Morales et al., 2007). Understanding the unique needs of distinct groups is important for responsible engagement. However, it is only a first step to work that necessitates confronting the experiences of more diverse samples to ensure representativeness of study findings.

Individuals holding membership among multiple historically disenfranchised groups may have intersectional concerns of distrust and exploitation (García et al., 2017). For example, among Latinx individuals, factors such as immigration status and language of origin may serve as barriers to participation not faced by participants with otherwise similar experiences (García et al., 2017; Suarez-Morales et al., 2007). Similarly, within justice-impacted populations in which houselessness is also prevalent, developing ways to engage unhoused individuals becomes particularly important to tell a representative story about the impacts of system involvement. For example, in addressing the diversity of experiences and identities among homeless individuals, Mayock and Bretherton (2016) detail how understanding gender-specific risks and responses enhances work aimed at engaging this population. Nevertheless, the challenges created by the transience ascribed to the broader population demonstrate the need for a balanced approach toward consistent contact for recruiting and retaining these participants (Strehlau et al., 2017).

To address the observed challenges of engaging participants of minoritized racial identities, lower socioeconomic means, and unstable housing dynamics, extant literature has often explored barriers unique to each of these distinct groups (Ejiogu et al., 2011; Strehlau et al., 2017). Because much of this undertaking has been led by public health researchers, the challenges of engaging such individuals in legally consequential criminal justice research have been less explored. Furthermore, existing research has failed to explore the complex challenges posed by intersectional identities among people from different hard-to-reach populations and instead explored barriers to reaching individuals from various marginalized groups in a mutually exclusive fashion. Given the overrepresentation of intersecting identities within the justice system, including minoritized racial identities, people of lower socioeconomic status, and unhoused individuals, alternative approaches are needed to attend to similar and dissimilar needs of disparate identities within the same study. Such remedies should prioritize inclusion of individuals with shared and lived experience into study development and execution.

The role of lived experience

Research has increasingly revealed the benefits of including staff who have personally navigated systems that investigators are studying. Several studies suggest that when individuals receive peer support, they report feeling more respected and valued compared to interacting with non-peer practitioners (Barrenger et al., 2019). By employing the use of ‘peer staff’, a subset of individuals with lived criminal legal system involvement (e.g. formerly arrested or detained), research teams may increase participant engagement. This is largely evidenced by peers’ ability to engage their clients without judgement and to work iteratively to make recommendations that best serve identified needs (Reingle Gonzalez et al., 2019). Although peer staff often obtain institutional certifications, including specializations in healthcare delivery or reentry services, people with lived experience who do not have certifications can offer similar support, acting as advocates or gatekeepers to inform and protect vulnerable populations from unnecessary harm (Bonevski et al., 2014; Gidugu et al., 2015).

Increasingly, public health researchers have sought to incorporate the voices of people with lived experience into research processes, either through membership on a project steering committee or as a formal consultant during the development of the research design and protocols (Johnston et al., 2021; Jones et al., 2019). Including these individuals early in the process can ensure that research questions are relevant and posed in a way that is sensitive to the current experiences of the population. Their involvement throughout the research process can also improve the integrity of the research itself by encouraging use of person-centered language (Ferguson, 2021; Lewis & Hasking, 2019). While the benefits of peer staff engaging transient or marginalized populations are evident in practical and clinical settings, the advantages of integrating individuals with lived experience into research within the criminal legal system warrants continued exploration.

Since the late 1990s, criminal justice research has similarly promoted efforts to examine the importance of lived experience in informing scientific conclusions (Jones et al., 2009). The field of Convict Criminology has generated space for formerly incarcerated individuals to craft narratives around their lived experiences (Leyva & Bickel, 2010; Richards & Ross, 2003). While the often ethnographic and qualitative work of convict criminologists has continued to grow and advance, this work has not been without critique (Lilly, 2009; Tietjen, 2019). Since its inception, debate has ensued about ‘insider’ vs ‘outsider’ contributions to research in this area – suggesting a dichotomy of either biased insight from those with lived experience or insufficient interpretation by those without (Hammersley, 2015; Newbold et al., 2014; Tietjen, 2019). Additionally, numerous scholars have criticized the field for the seeming promotion of White male researchers who have been formally incarcerated while positing that contributors of color have often remained unidentified and nameless (Belknap, 2015). A rebuttal to such opinions highlights the disproportionate risk to scholars of color if identified as previously system-impacted (Aresti & Darke, 2016). These challenges, along with the racially and socioeconomically disparate admission of formerly incarcerated individuals into institutions of higher learning, limit the range of voices and perspectives elevated even within an area intended to uplift them (Stewart & Uggen, 2020).

The present paper details how barriers created by historic inequities may be overcome through partnership with individuals who have lived experience. In doing so, the current paper endeavors to expand the field’s insights about the utility of such roles and the process of engaging the perspectives of system-impacted individuals. Specifically, the current paper explores strategies to facilitate recruitment of hard-to-reach populations and presents recommendations for successfully engaging individuals with lived experience in the context of community-based criminal justice research.

The collateral consequences of pretrial detention study methodology

The central aim of the original study is to better understand the experiences of those who were detained pretrial in New York City. Specifically, the study explored how pretrial detention can affect an individual’s employment status, housing stability, financial stability, mental health, physical health, family or social relationships, and overall well-being. The study involved a series of semi-structured phone interviews with individuals who were arrested and had their cases continued at arraignment. The interviewing guide consisted of both closed and open-ended questions about participants’ experiences in jail, if they were detained, as well as their housing, employment, and family status at both their most recent arrest and time of the interview.

Sample identification and invitation to participate

As the main pretrial service agency in the city, The New York City Criminal Justice Agency (CJA) conducts interviews with nearly all individuals summarily arrested within the five boroughs of New York City – gathering information to inform court decisions about release and likelihood of returning to court. Given the agency’s role in the pretrial process and direct access to individuals impacted by the justice system, CJA holds a uniquely advantageous position to identify and recruit potential participants for the study.

The study team built upon the agency’s access to these populations by engaging in borough-based, in-person introductions to the project during pre-arraignment interviews. Given this existing infrastructure, a question was added to the end of the existing pre-arraignment interview to ask individuals whether they consented for researchers to contact them following release. This created a pool of individuals from which the sample was later drawn. This question was also used to promote trust in the study team and a sense of agency among prospective participants to ensure that they were free to make informed decisions about whether to share information for research purposes. This approach also enabled potential participants to ask questions of, and engage interpersonally with, staff. In doing so, staff members were able to demonstrate shared concern for participant values such as trust and privacy (García et al., 2017). If they agreed to be contacted, participants were later reached by phone, given an overview of the study, and provided opportunities to ask questions prior to giving consent.

We used non-probability sampling methods to recruit participants who had previously agreed to be contacted for the study prior to arraignment. This initial consent to be contacted provided an additional layer of autonomy to prospective participants. Though participants ultimately self-selected into the study, we sought to obtain a sample that was representative of the NYC legal landscape. More importantly, we sought to oversample individuals often less represented (e.g. women) to ensure that their perspectives were included.

Study recruitment

All individuals over the age of 18 who 1) were summarily arrested, 2) provided consent to the above procedures at the pre-arraignment interview, and 3) had their cases continued at arraignment were eligible for participation in this study. Additionally, only English and Spanish-speaking participants were included due to the study team’s limited capacity to efficiently translate study materials into multiple languages. Language proficiency was determined by the language in which participants completed their pre-arraignment interviews. Most interviews occurred approximately 2 weeks after release from either Central Booking or pretrial detention. To incentivize participation and appropriately compensate individuals for their time, participants received a $10 gift card for completing an interview.

The final sample included 1,529 individuals who were interviewed at least once between July 2019 and March 2021. Among the study sample, the most common racial identity of participants was Black (57.5%), followed by Hispanic (28.6%) and White (8.8%). Most participants were male (76.2%). The mean age of participants was 35.8 years. Almost one in three participants (30%) faced housing issues at the baseline interview, reporting that in the year before their arrest they faced eviction (15%) or struggled to pay rent or utilities (27%). While interviews were offered in both English and Spanish, only 4.4% of interviews were conducted using Spanish (Bergin et al., 2022 for study demographics).

COVID-19 and New York state bail reform

Two important historical events affected both recruitment and data collection processes for the study. First, in January 2020, 6 months after data collection began, New York State implemented bail reform legislation that significantly reduced the number of individuals who were detained pretrial (Kim et al., 2021). In turn, the pool of individuals who were eligible for this study and who were detained pretrial decreased significantly. As a result, the present sample yielded a much smaller proportion of detained pretrial respondents than initially anticipated − 7.4% of the total sample (n = 113). Despite investigating the impacts of detention, preliminary data revealed that information garnered from individuals experiencing arrest alone might also yield insightful contributions to the field. Second, like other ongoing studies at the time, our research efforts were impacted by the emergence of COVID-19 (see Miller & Blumstein, 2020). The pandemic and subsequent lockdowns disrupted court processes from March 2020 onward and made recruitment and retention more challenging for this study. Nonetheless, the interviews and knowledge garnered from study development are valuable for individuals embarking upon research with similar populations under challenging circumstances.

Description of recruitment and retention strategies

In alignment with previous research showing challenges of recruiting justice-impacted study participants – such as historical disenfranchisement, exploitation, lack of trust, and lack of accessibility – the current study team initially encountered many barriers to recruiting participants with intersectional and stigmatized identities (Otado et al., 2015). However, rather than separately exploring barriers of recruiting minorities or unhoused individuals, the current study extended previous work by addressing the challenges of recruiting individuals from multiple hard-to-reach identities within the same study. The strategies detailed in this paper provide an account of approaches to recruitment and retention of these hard-to-reach populations, emphasizing the role of engaging research staff members with lived experience.

Phone administration

The research team facilitated follow-up contact to participants within 1 month of their release from arraignment or detention. With awareness of the historic distrust of research and legal system actors, the full informed consent was conducted by phone (rather than in-person) to reduce participant concerns about risks to confidentiality (Singer & Presser, 2007). Phone administration also eliminated travel and time costs otherwise associated with in-person interviewing – aligning with calls to reduce participant time burdens to increase study participation (Teague et al., 2018). Such approaches have been supported by previous studies which found increased response rates when greater flexibility in scheduling and alternative methods of data collection (e.g. phone administration) were offered (Otado et al., 2015; Teague et al., 2018). Importantly, Ngo-Metzger et al. (2004) also demonstrated that phone administration did not diminish the quality of data collected compared to in-person administration. As such, phone interviews were the method of data collection used for all waves of study participation.

Participant understanding and comprehension

Across multiple fields of study, research has demonstrated the significance of establishing and clearly articulating the purpose and goals of the research being conducted (Bernal et al., 2014; Bowers et al., 2017). Equally important is the participant’s ability to understand these goals, as well as the risks and benefits of participating both to themselves and the communities they represent (Bowers et al., 2017; Otado et al., 2015). One such factor that contributed to participants’ abilities to make informed decisions in evaluating risks and benefits to themselves and their communities came from the content included in the consent form. Through the engagement of team members with lived experience, the study team was able to identify concerns unique to this population and demonstrate in the consent process shared values between participants and the research team. It is important to mention that achieving this goal was an iterative process. For example, when time constraints proved to be burdensome for participants, the study team modified procedures to accommodate participant needs. This required balancing considerations such as standardization and reduction of participant burden.

Research team members were attentive to pain points for participants and provided written records to the study's Principal Investigator (PI). One such concern was the length of the original consent form – which originally took nearly 5 minutes to review. Numerous participants reported displeasure or frustration due to limited availability of time. As such, the research team worked with the Institutional Review Board to modify consent procedures and the most salient information for informed decision-making was identified. The research team then provided a full copy of the consent form when disbursing participant incentive payments. This ensured that participants had all the information necessary while also working to remedy an area of concern among participants. Overall, this proved to be particularly important for recruitment, and affirmed previous research findings about the importance of identifying and addressing the needs of participants, as well as building them into each step of the research design and procedures (Bernal et al., 2014; Burlew, 2003).

Flexible approaches for hard-to-reach populations

Despite facing known barriers to recruitment of minoritized and low socioeconomic populations, several factors resulted in positive engagement between researchers and participants. This included 1) the implementation of clear research questions that articulated direct participant benefits and 2) evident relevance of this work to the community studied. In addition to logistic concerns, considerations of the study’s racial, ethnic, age-based, and gender-based diversity required careful planning as previous research has demonstrated the importance of integrating such considerations into team composition and research design (Dilworth-Anderson, 2011; Parmar et al., 2022). Shared identity between research team members and study participants contributed greatly to the recruitment of the study sample, affirming prior work positing the importance of such symmetry (Burlew, 2003; Ejiogu et al., 2011). For example, the engagement of Latinx researchers allowed the study team to expand its population of interest, as team members were able to translate materials into Spanish, piloting materials with individuals of different national identities and dialects. This was particularly important given the national diversity of Spanish-speaking people across New York City. As a result, the study materials were standardized for utility among a larger audience of Spanish speakers.

Additionally, in the development of standardized materials, the engagement of team members from four of the city’s five boroughs helped ensure that concerns of citizens from different communities were afforded equal consideration. The varied perspectives of team members were crucial in accessing hard-to-reach populations who are overrepresented in the justice system and underrepresented in research. To standardize delivery of each team member’s baseline knowledge and insight, staff were also provided training in areas of human subject research, suicide prevention, vicarious trauma, and cultural competence (Ejiogu et al., 2011). The diversity of the team coupled with staff training provided unique advantages in identifying and allaying concerns of distrust and exploitation in research among minority participants – particularly in a criminal justice context. In some instances, such as when individuals expressed distrust in speaking with White interviewers, researchers were able to speak from a space of awareness and proximity to affirm the legitimacy of the historical references informing participant reservations while also reorienting participants to the study’s goals.

In addition to staff training, the team developed a resource guide to direct participants to community resources when necessary. Such approaches helped to address specific challenges by reaching other marginalized individuals often overrepresented in the justice system. The group best served by this resource were participants who experienced homelessness – accounting for roughly 13% of our sample. Recruitment and retention of participants experiencing homelessness (particularly those with mental illness) require flexible, individualized, and unconventional strategies in longitudinal studies (Strehlau et al., 2017). Similar accommodations were required to engage this population in the current study; for example, offering participants the option to pick up their incentives in person rather than receiving them via mail or email. Moreover, increased flexibility to immediately conduct interviews with these individuals was required, as well as acknowledgment by study team members of the need to prioritize participants’ concerns about housing often before, during and after the interviews. Despite the trainings and resources provided to staff, the study team’s greatest asset proved to be the insight afforded by team members’ direct and indirect lived experience with the legal system.

Role of peers

Individuals working in CJA’s Outreach Center – a unit which supports individuals arrested in New York City by providing phone, written, and text-based court information and notifications to increase court appearance and prevent deeper system involvement – were tasked with recruiting and interviewing participants for this study. Outreach staff were specifically chosen for this role based on their interaction with system-impacted individuals in both remote and community settings, and their cognizance of participant needs and experiences. As such, outreach staff members were uniquely situated to inform and address the needs of vulnerable participants. Many of these individuals also had their own direct or vicarious exposure to the criminal legal system through prior experiences of arrest, detention, incarceration, or supporting loved ones with recurring system involvement. Proximity to the population of interest afforded empathetic insights for recruiting participants who were otherwise hesitant due to mistrust (Bonevski et al., 2014). This ability to draw from prior experiences enhanced communication, understanding, and trust between outreach staff and participants.

Integration of individuals with lived experience

While the contributions of individuals with lived experience have historically been documented in community or clinical contexts (e.g. violence interrupters, credible messengers, peer mentors, peer specialists, etc.), the efficacy of these roles suggests potential utility in the research landscape as well. As such, the research team integrated the unique perspectives of these individuals within the team and included them in the study design process. With little extant literature documenting the influence or contributions of individuals with lived experience within the criminal legal research realm, the team established a practice of incorporating the insights of staff with lived experience during development and revision at each step of study design, recruitment, and data collection. These methods are described below.

Outreach staff with lived experience supported the development of research questions, offering suggestions about language and what experiences might be most important to capture. These contributions provided insights about themes for which there was no guiding theoretical framework. Additionally, team members with lived experience were integral in determining language and phrasing most appropriate to maintain engagement and rapport while eliciting objective participant responses. For example, one team member with previous system involvement recommended changing a question originally phrased as, ‘what were you accused of doing?’ to ‘what did they accuse you of doing?’. This change allowed participants to feel as though researchers were centering participant perspectives in the data collection process – for which participants expressed gratitude during interviews. Outreach staff also informed decisions about incentive delivery methods and reduced risks by advising about potential harm posed by questions – especially those inquiring about detention experiences.

At the conclusion of the study, team members with lived experience navigating the criminal legal and shelter systems provided participants with information about housing opportunities for people with prior or open criminal cases. In addition to these contributions, the semi-structured nature of the scripts allowed those with lived experience to respond to concerns of distrust or perceived risks of participation and establish credibility of the work. As anticipated, many of the benefits previously demonstrated by engaging individuals with lived experience in clinical contexts proved to translate into the research environment as well.

Discussion

The current paper provides an overview of challenges commonly experienced in engaging hard-to-reach groups within system-impacted samples, and more importantly proposes potential recruitment and retention solutions with an emphasis on the contributions of individuals with lived experience. Improving responses to these challenges is central to the success of empirical work in the field of criminology. Though the study team was not able to remedy all challenges posed, the team found that many of the recommendations for engaging hard-to-reach populations, levied by researchers from other fields, translated successfully into effective methods of recruitment and retention for criminal justice researchers. For example, despite varied findings about the efficacy of phone administration (Bernal et al., 2014; Ngo-Metzger et al., 2004; Otado et al., 2015; Teague et al., 2018), the study team found that among more transient participants, phone administration substantively reduced participant burden and allowed more flexibility in scheduling and completion of data collection. Furthermore, with the outbreak of COVID-19, use of phone contacts afforded the team an advantage; staff were able to maintain a consistent method of administration, avoiding any potential differences that could have been otherwise attributable to the method of delivery. Like previous research, the study team also found symmetry between team members and participant identities to be helpful in establishing and maintaining rapport. Given the sensitivity of the work, the importance of having staff who participants believed shared identity, values, and concern for their culture and community was invaluable in both participant recruitment and overall study design (Dilworth-Anderson, 2011; Ejiogu et al., 2011; Parmar et al., 2022).

This experience also highlighted the importance of engaging staff members with lived experience as early as possible in research planning to ensure that the influences of their contributions were not perceived as secondary. Previous research has identified the potential for such perceptions among individuals with lived experience who reported feeling tokenized and valued as a figurehead rather than a substantive contributor to power (Ferguson, 2021). One experience where staff had to navigate similar challenges was in disagreements about participant compensation. Ultimately, considerations of the length of interviews and approved funding were two practical points that informed the final amount. Consequently, as learned by the study team, earlier engagement of these individuals can facilitate a balance of considerations of feasibility and interpersonal benefit. Furthermore, it also minimizes the likelihood of staff contributions being indirectly bound by decisions that have preceded their involvement.

While the current study benefited significantly from the inclusion of individuals with lived experience, it is important to acknowledge that the comprehensive investments of the overall study team. Such investments facilitated the study’s success despite challenges such as recruiting hard-to-reach populations, NY state bail reform, and the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to the interpersonal benefits of improved rapport building, including outreach staff in the study team also fostered positive and inclusive experiences for participants in more practical ways. For example, by including Spanish materials, the study team was able to sample a portion of the population often not represented in research due to language barriers. Additionally, by having all participating outreach staff members receive certification in human subjects’ protection, the team was able to combine personal knowledge and proximity to the population of interest with best research practices to promote both objective and subjective considerations for protecting participants and ensuring the integrity of the study.

Team members also reported experiencing more personal benefits from engaging in related training. For example, staff intuition, coupled with training workshops on topics of suicide prevention and vicarious trauma, contributed to increased awareness of, and ability to identify, emotional impacts of the work, making staff more comfortable speaking out about this. Still, it is important to note that for multiple reasons – including personal disposition and concern about perceptions of work performance – members may not have voluntarily disclosed when they felt burdened or impacted. For this reason, it became important to incorporate regular staff check-ins to solicit such feedback and prevent burnout across the study team – particularly among members with lived experience holding liminal identities as both peer and researcher (Watson, 2019). Such training furthered the professional development of staff, with some members going on to contribute to other research projects as well. Overall, despite warranting empirical testing of techniques found useful by the research team, the knowledge garnered through the current study has potential implications for researchers and practitioners alike.

Implications for research

This paper demonstrates the importance of including those with lived experience in all aspects of the research process. This includes incorporating peer staff, and other contributors with lived experience who have been traditionally excluded from academia, into all aspects of study design, planning, and implementation. This recommendation comes in the wake of nearly 25 years of discourse about the elevation of such voices in the development of questions and dissemination of research narratives representing experiences of those impacted by the legal system. In doing so, researchers take additional precautions to ensure that all materials and instructions are provided with specific attention to privacy, confidentiality, understanding, and comprehension. When researchers, alongside peer staff, center the needs and vulnerabilities of those most marginalized by society and targeted by the criminal legal system in their study planning, it stands to reason that recruitment and retention efforts will be strengthened.

The current study builds upon the achievements of Convict Criminology by highlighting the contributions of those with lived experiences to quantitative research, rather than ethnographic research alone. Furthermore, this account of effective recruitment techniques demonstrates the benefits of moving toward more formal engagement of people with lived experience even outside of academic settings. In doing so, researchers address multiple criticisms at once – the critique of marginalizing the perspectives of those with lived experience and of failing to diversify the contributions informing research work. Given the many systemic barriers that limit justice-involved individuals from joining academic communities – particularly individuals from racial groups overrepresented within the criminal legal system – the current work demonstrates a successful example of including those whose voices have gone unheard or misrepresented. The integration of these people in the current study allowed diverse and inclusive perspectives to be centered, rather than reduced to background roles, and further marginalized.

By including these perspectives, the research team increased the utility of the study findings, as the combination of insider knowledge and outsider objectivity ensured that more useful insights were generated through data collection. To this end, this paper demonstrates the benefits of such partnerships. Empirically trained researchers were able to effectively integrate knowledge gained from other social science fields about engaging hard-to-reach participants, while staff with lived experience provided interpersonal insights to develop research questions, recruitment plans, and human subject applications. Furthermore, the shared experiences between peer staff and participants helped foster a greater sense of rapport than would have otherwise been possible. By highlighting the importance of language and the potential for re-traumatization, peer staff made valuable contributions to the integrity of the research. Ultimately, this balance of subjective and objective contributions helped reduce the likelihood of empirically ignorant blind spots while also filtering subjective priorities through critical empirical lenses.

Implications for practice

For practitioners in the criminal justice field, this study championed a vision for research that includes staff without previous formal research training, and illustrates their immense value for future research studies. By demonstrating how to maximize the contributions and knowledge afforded by employees or volunteers with lived experience, this paper also provides insight for community-based organizations and other agencies that are prioritizing practice-based work. Hiring practices that overcome the biased gatekeeping observed in some academic settings can ensure greater diversity of thought and inclusion of those closest to the problems – and potential solutions (Aresti & Darke, 2016, 2018). Given the involvement of many community-based organizations with people who are often hard to recruit or retain, as well as the challenges of working with transient populations, many of the benefits detailed in this article can also be translated to enhance and improve engagement of difficult-to-retain clientele even in practical settings. Practitioner-researchers, when given the appropriate training, supervision, and support, can be invaluable contributors, able to connect with participants in creative and meaningful ways to offer unique perspectives afforded by their personal and professional experiences in the system. The integration of those with client-facing and service-based skills into the research process means they can conduct research in addition to providing participants with services and resources not provided by traditional research interviewers.

In addition to integrating staff with lived experience, the exercise of interdepartmental collaboration may be best practice for future practical and empirical endeavors. This study consisted of staff from several CJA departments, including Outreach, Research, and Information Technology. Pioneering multidisciplinary strategies and strengthening working relationships across departments was essential for the study’s success and can be replicated moving forward.

Conclusion

The intersectional identity of researchers with lived experience affords collateral insights that account for, and potentially mitigate, historical marginalization fostered by both the criminal legal system and researchers. The recommendations of this paper are not meant to ignore prior contributions from the field of convict criminology but rather to endorse the integration and centering of these voices in empirical endeavors to further inform the fields of criminology and criminal justice. The integration of staff with lived experience allows us to learn from the perspectives of those most affected by a system which disparately impacts marginalized communities, who are furthermore often labeled as hard-to-reach and mistrustful of research. This engagement has the potential to maximize the reach and impact of work focused on identifying and addressing the needs of system-impacted populations by improving the ability to establish trust with these communities directly. Future researchers are encouraged to empirically evaluate the efficacy of the proposed strategies among other criminal justice samples.

Acknowledgments

This study would not have been possible without the members of the CJA Outreach team: Richard Azzolino, Jesus De La Rosa, Tralph McMillan, Christopher Waters, Jefferey Balbuena, Tawana Thorne, Maria Concepcion, Veldonna Chaunce, Brandon Cox-Dickson, Julissa Martinez, Jacqueline Flores, Jamila Bobb, Karla Lopez, Stephanie Vargas, Tushawn Martinez, and Jai Diamond.

Disclosure statement

There are no known conflicts of interest between any members of the study team and any of our funding or reviewing institutions.

Additional information

Funding

This project was supported by Arnold Ventures. The content is the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the views of Arnold Ventures or the New York City Criminal Justice Agency.

Notes on contributors

Imani Randolph

Imani Randolph is a former Senior Research Practice Coordinator at the NYC Criminal Justice Agency. She is currently a doctoral student in Psychological Sciences at the University of California, Irvine.

Raven Simonds

Raven Simonds is a Senior Research Analyst at the NYC Criminal Justice Agency.

Dalia Sharps

Dalia Sharps is a Senior Program Associate at the NYC Criminal Justice Agency.

Jamala Wallace

Jamala Wallace is a Senior Research Practice Coordinator at the NYC Criminal Justice Agency.

Hannah Joseph

Hannah Joseph is a former Data Analyst at the NYC Criminal Justice Agency. She currently works as a Senior Business Intelligence Analyst at Human Centered.

René Ropac

René Ropac is a former Senior Research Analyst at the NYC Criminal Justice Agency. He is currently a Senior Research Associate at the Data Collaborative for Justice at John Jay College.

Tiffany Bergin

Tiffany Bergin is Director of Research and Evidence-Based Practice at the NYC Criminal Justice Agency.