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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Moving Beyond Our Methodological Default: A Case For Mixed Methods, John Brent, Peter Kraska
Moving Beyond Our Methodological Default: A Case For Mixed Methods, John Brent, Peter Kraska
Peter Kraska
Within criminal justice/criminology exists a host of available research methods that generally default along qualitative and quantitative lines. Studying crime and justice phenomena, then, generally involves choosing one approach or the other. Although this binary tradition of qualitative vs. quantitative has predominated, our field's methodological infrastructure has recently demonstrated a willingness to adopt more inclusive practices. The purpose of this study is to discuss the nascent yet probable transformation of re-orienting our field toward a new paradigm of inclusiveness that acknowledges the use of mixed methods research as being both legitimate and beneficial. This paper examines the role methodological exclusivism …
Trafficking In Bodily Perfection: Examining The Late‐Modern Steroid Marketplace And Its Criminalization, Peter Kraska, Charles Bussard, John Brent
Trafficking In Bodily Perfection: Examining The Late‐Modern Steroid Marketplace And Its Criminalization, Peter Kraska, Charles Bussard, John Brent
Peter Kraska
Illicit steroid and human growth hormone use by professional athletes has received significant media and political attention in the last five years. The resulting political pressure has compelled federal law enforcement to prosecute serious new control initiatives. To date, no academic research inquiring into the nature of this illicit industry exists. This study fills this void through the mixed methods approach—employing both ethnographic field research and quantitative content analysis. The ethnographic data demonstrate a fascinating late‐modern trafficking scheme where the central informant established an apartment‐based manufacturing operation, converting raw steroid chemical compounds ordered off the Internet into injectable solutions. Content …
Criminal Justice Theory: Toward Legitimacy And An Infrastructure, Peter Kraska
Criminal Justice Theory: Toward Legitimacy And An Infrastructure, Peter Kraska
Peter Kraska
Within Criminal Justice/Criminology, “theory” is generally assumed to be concerned with crime and crime rates. Studying criminal justice is tacitly, and sometimes explicitly, relegated to the narrow role of evaluative and descriptive scholarship. This article explores the reasons for our field’s failure to recognize the importance of developing an accessible and well‐recognized theoretical infrastructure not about crime, but criminal justice and crime control phenomena. It examines the complexity of our object of study when theorizing criminal justice and the efficacy of organizing criminal justice theory using multiple “theoretical orientations.” The conclusion stresses the essentiality of criminal justice theory, with particular …