Research Models in Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice

A generation ago, one professor at Harvard Law School used to greet his students at the beginning of the semester with an offer to debate them on any subject so long as he was allowed to “state the question.” Any review of the crime, law enforcement, and criminal justice literature produced during the last ten years indicates that there is still as much disagreement over how the “relevant” questions should be stated as there is over the answers to these questions. Despite a strong public demand to “stop crime,” there is little consensus within the research community as to the questions (if any) which, if answered, would assist in the prevention of crime or the improvement of police, court, and correctional processes. Much of the literature “states the question” in terms of the narrowly defined “efficiency” of law enforcement and criminal justice agencies; a second group asks questions concerning the functions assigned to the criminal justice system; and a third set of critics are concerned with the implications of decisions made by the police, judges, and correctional officials for a democratic system of government. While I cannot attempt to review the literature which has been generated under these three models, I will describe each briefly and suggest some of the problems that have risen in research on law enforcement and criminal justice.