While the scientific method might not be the first thing that springs to mind when you think about the criminal justice system, this systematic approach to fact-based examination and analysis is extremely helpful when it comes to solving criminal cases, understanding criminal behavior, and instituting public policies that address issues related to crime.
Before tackling the four principal categories of criminal justice research, let us briefly discuss why research studies are essential in the worlds of criminology, law enforcement, judicial oversight, and corrections/rehabilitation.
What Is the Purpose of Research in Criminal Justice?
Research in criminal justice is used to make individual cases and entire systems of criminal justice more effective, efficient, impartial, and fair. Many diverse types of criminal justice professionals consider evidence-based research an incredibly important part of their jobs.
Why Research Is Important in Criminal Justice
While the link between empirical scientific research and professional decision-making is abundantly clear in fields such as healthcare, it is far easier to disregard scientific research as unreliable or unnecessary in criminal justice matters. For this reason, the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice (CJCJ) has noted a severe under-utilization of research-based evidence in both the policy and practice of criminal justice.
However, the CJCJ joins most criminal justice organizations and authorities in asserting that expertly designed, implemented, and conducted research is essential in the criminal justice space. Because empirical research is based on objective facts, the results obtained allow criminal justice professionals to make far more impartial and logical decisions in a field that places an extraordinarily high value on such qualities.
The Role of Criminal Justice Research
Depending on their professional responsibilities and the task at hand, individuals and organizations in the criminal justice field may employ research to meet any number of objectives. From examining the latest industry publications to conducting in-depth surveys, research takes a variety of forms to serve an even wider variety of functions within the criminal justice system.
By correctly applying research methods, criminal justice professionals can formulate research questions, design studies, collect and analyze data and draft research reports. These skills are highly valued in the field because they generate new evidence-based solutions that can improve strategies or systems. Research is a significant way to contribute to a more effective and equitable justice system.
Who Conducts Criminal Justice Research?
From criminal investigators and attorneys to justice system administrators and policymakers, many professionals in the criminal justice field conduct and rely upon several types of research. Some research is focused on practical application while other research is more interested in academic literature. As a criminal justice researcher, you might collaborate with law enforcement agencies, other organizations, and private individuals to investigate crimes and identify important criminal trends. Depending on your academic concentration and career interest, you might focus on cybersecurity, white-collar crime, human trafficking, or the rehabilitation of criminal offenders. You might choose to focus on individual casework or larger issues, such as general criminal behavior or criminal justice reform.
Research Process in Criminal Justice
Due to the many roles and diverse professional applications of criminal justice research, it requires a broad spectrum of processes to meet the specific goals and demands of the situation at hand. It is up to individual researchers to apply the right research method for their purposes.
All research processes can be divided into two broad categories: quantitative and qualitative. Dealing with numerical evidence and the generation of statistics, quantitative research methods include survey studies and the meta-analysis of previously published data. Qualitative research methods, by contrast, focus less on raw information and more on life experiences. Common processes used in qualitative research include interviewing and direct observation.
Gathering Data
Whether accomplished through surveys, interviews, databases, or any other processes, gathering information is essential in all criminal justice enterprises. Beyond its indispensable role in furthering individual criminal cases, data collection spurs problem identification and improvement measures in the overall justice system. By identifying crime patterns, risk assessment and police resource statistics, researchers can solve a range of problems by pinpointing key systemic measures of quality, efficiency, and impartiality.
Research Theory
Depending on the specific research questions asked, professionals may turn to any number of criminology theories to find answers. Some of these research theories relate directly to criminal investigation, while others are better suited to policymaking. There are also research theories that center around criminal psychology and behavioral impulses, as well as patterns of criminal activity within society.
What Are the Four Purposes of Research in Criminal Justice?
The wide range of research theories and methods in the criminal justice field can be a bit daunting to contemplate. However, it is easy to classify criminal justice research according to the kind of information it strives to obtain. At its heart, all research in the criminal justice field can be divided according to purpose into one of the four following categories:
1. Exploration
Exploratory criminal justice research aims to investigate a case or subject area that is little understood or has yet to be broadly studied. In individual case studies, this often means determining the underlying causes of criminal behavior.
2. Description
Descriptive criminal justice research aims to define and explain the subject under study. This might involve describing the common characteristics of criminal offenders or the criminal environment in each neighborhood.
3. Explanation
Explanatory criminal justice research aims to identify the causes and effects associated with the subject under study. It can answer questions such as why certain people become career criminals and why certain areas have higher crime rates than others.
4. Evaluation/Application
Evaluative criminal justice research aims to determine the effectiveness of interventions, programs, or policies. The chief goals of this type of research are to better prevent crime and engender improvement in the criminal justice system.
No matter which of the four formal purposes of research you may pursue, all criminal justice research leads to professional and personal growth for the researcher and the field itself. Through your research, you may meet people and develop new connections, have them published in a journal, build a name for yourself in the field, and contribute to future research.
When to Conduct Each Research Type
To get a better idea about what each of these research types entail, it may be helpful to take a closer look at when criminal justice professionals tend to employ them.
1. Exploration
To identify clear research questions and generate educated, viable hypotheses, exploratory research is often used to lay the proper groundwork at the very beginning of criminal justice research projects. Professionals who commonly use exploratory research include law enforcement officers, criminal investigators and prosecuting and defense attorneys. Exploratory studies can also lay the groundwork for innovative crime prevention strategies, identifying risk factors and opportunities for early intervention.
2. Description
Useful in all corners of the criminal justice field, descriptive research is useful whenever a criminal justice professional needs to define and explain a phenomenon truthfully and precisely. Criminologists might turn to descriptive research when studying crime patterns over time, while attorneys might use it to collect relevant facts about cases under their review.
3. Explanation
Like descriptive research, explanatory research is widely used by a broad spectrum of criminal justice professionals for a variety of reasons. This is because understanding the underlying causes of specific actions or phenomena is so essential throughout the criminal justice field. In addition to general criminology researchers, all types of law enforcement and justice system workers use explanatory research to identify and understand the root causes of crime.
4. Evaluation
Typically conducted to assess the quality of a policy or program currently in effect, evaluative research is particularly useful to leaders in the criminal justice system. By evaluating key criteria that might range from crime rates to court delays, these leaders can do their part to improve the criminal justice system. Judicial administrators, as well as top law enforcement and corrections officials, can benefit from constantly evaluating the operations under their authority. Furthermore, elected government representatives and other policymakers are wise to employ evaluative research when making decisions regarding criminal justice.
Practical Challenges and Best Practices in Criminal Justice Research
High-quality criminal justice research doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It must navigate ethical and legal duties to participants, methodological pitfalls, and tight timelines and budgets. Let’s explore common challenges, as well as pragmatic best practices researchers can apply to design stronger studies and safeguard participants.
Practical Challenges in Criminal Justice Research
Informed Consent & Confidentiality
Criminal justice research often involves vulnerable populations such as incarcerated people, minors, victims, and individuals under supervision. In these settings, power dynamics can complicate truly voluntary consent. Researchers should guard against coercion, use clear and accessible consent language, and anticipate mandatory reporting obligations that may limit promised confidentiality. Because these studies generate sensitive data, including identifiers, criminal histories, and trauma narratives, teams must rigorously de-identify records and store them securely.
Bias & Objectivity in Research
Bias can seep in at every stage, from who is invited to participate to how questions are posed and records interpreted. Administrative data add another wrinkle: they often mirror enforcement priorities rather than true incidence, which can skew both selection and measurement. To keep the work as objective as possible, name your positionality and assumptions, standardize instruments and coder training, and build routine checks into the workflow — including intercoder reliability, audit trails, and triangulation.
Sample Size and Generalizability
Access constraints, rare events such as homicide or human trafficking, and fragmented data systems often yield small or uneven samples. Similarly, results drawn from a single agency or jurisdiction may not travel well because laws, policies, resources, and community contexts differ. For more accurate results, start with a sampling plan informed by power analysis, and be explicit about the limits of your data. When possible, strengthen external validity by running multi-site studies, oversampling under-represented groups, or following cohorts over time.
Funding & Resource Limitations
Timelines stretch and scope narrows when grant cycles, IRB and agency approvals, and data-licensing costs collide. Fieldwork, transcription, and secure data infrastructure add expenses, while staff turnover and training needs pull from the same budget. These pressures can push teams toward shorter studies or secondary data. To overcome these limitations, align ambitions with capacity through strategic partnerships, phased designs, and budgeting that realistically covers personnel and participant incentives, as well as data security.
Best Practices in Criminal Justice Research
Addressing Barriers, Mitigate Bias & Validate Data
When researchers anticipate access constraints, data-sharing terms, or recruitment hurdles at the outset, studies are less likely to shift course midway through. Careful preparation also helps limit bias; for instance, piloting instruments and training coders consistently makes it easier to keep results objective, while documenting key analytic choices provides transparency later on. Validation works best as an ongoing process rather than a single step, with reliability checks and sensitivity tests reinforcing findings and triangulation offering additional perspective. In some cases, inviting advisory groups from agencies or communities can uncover hidden assumptions and strengthen both the study design and its impact.
Institutional Review Board (IRB) Approval
Ethics review tends to shape a study long before data collection begins. With populations such as incarcerated people, minors, or victims, IRB scrutiny often centers on how consent will be obtained, what limits to confidentiality exist (for example, mandated reporting or subpoena risk), and how sensitive records will be protected in practice. Aligning IRB expectations with agency approvals early on prevents conflicting requirements from surfacing mid-project. In some contexts, added safeguards — such as Certificates of Confidentiality or prisoner-research protections — become part of the design rather than an afterthought.
Research Methodology & Peer Review
Strong methods usually come from a tight fit between the question, the setting, and the data — not from loyalty to any one technique. When a study explains who is included and why, and lays out the planned analyses up front, hindsight bias has less room to creep in and the findings are easier to interpret. Treating documentation as part of the method, such as with clear codebooks, version-controlled scripts, and audit-friendly workflows, also makes the work easier to reproduce. Finally, outside scrutiny through preprints or peer debriefs often exposes blind spots, helping strengthen the end product.
Evidence-Based Practices & Outcomes
Developing a clear theory of change helps keep interventions grounded in the right mechanisms, leading to stronger, evidence-based solutions. Decision-makers tend to find results most useful when measures are valid and policy-relevant, equity is examined through thoughtful disaggregation, and implementation fidelity is tracked alongside impact to strengthen policy decisions. Where budgets and trade-offs matter, cost-effectiveness or cost-benefit analyses can add needed perspective. Closing the loop — by translating findings into accessible briefs or tools and sharing them back with agencies and communities — supports uptake and continuous improvement.
Limitations of Criminology Research
Beyond the reluctance of some officials to use evidence-based research, many other barriers can derail the research process at any time. At its very heart, the field of criminal justice even lacks a clear definition of the word “crime.” This makes gathering information about specific criminal acts difficult, if not impossible, from the outset.
Other limitations of criminal justice research include its highly specific nature. For example, criminology studies are specific to the unique geographic location in which they occur. This makes implementing widespread changes quite difficult because policies that met with success in one area could fail in another. This is also true of successful solutions that often fail to scale within other judicial systems and social structures.
Frequently Asked Questions About Criminal Justice Research
Q1: What distinguishes explanatory from evaluative research?
Explanatory research asks why and how a phenomenon occurs, aiming to uncover causal mechanisms and build or test theory. Evaluative research asks whether a policy, program, or intervention works in practice, focusing on outcomes, implementation, and usefulness for decision-making. The two often connect: explanatory work clarifies mechanisms that inform an intervention’s design, while evaluation tests whether those mechanisms translate into real-world impact.
Q2: Why is explanatory research important in criminal justice?
Explanatory research helps pinpoint the causes drivers of crime and justice outcomes — such as opportunity, deterrence, social networks, or systemic disparities — so interventions target the right levers. By distinguishing correlation from causation, explanatory studies reduce guesswork, anticipate unintended consequences, and provide the theoretical footing that makes later evaluations more accurate and policy-relevant.
Start Your Criminal Justice Research at Keiser!
If criminal justice research is where your interest lies — or if you’re already working in the field and ready to take the next step — Keiser University Graduate School offers programs designed to help you lead with evidence and expertise.
Our Master of Arts in Criminal Justice (MACJ), Doctor of Criminal Justice (DCJ), and Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Criminal Justice and Criminology programs place empirical research at the center of learning. Small classes, close faculty mentorship, and a focus on practical application bridge the gap between the classroom and the real world, ensuring your studies translate into meaningful impact in the field.
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