1.6: Importance of Empirical Evidence in Criminal Justice-The Use of Science to Understand Crime and Develop

It is important to understand the need for empirical evidence and scientific method in all aspects of the criminal justice process. The criminal court processes and procedures are no exception. While the court process relies heavily on historical practices and rights established in the Constitution, we must rely on empirical evidence and the scientific method to support the court processes and procedures. This allows our practices to grow and evolve through different cultural adaptions and also technological advances. This section examines what the scientific method is and how it is applied to criminology.

Pin It! The Scientific Method

Learn more about the scientific method in this video: the Scientific Method.

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Overview

A theory is an explanation to make sense of our observations about the world. We test hypotheses and create theories that help us understand and explain phenomena. According to Paternoster and Bachman (2001), theories should attempt to portray the world accurately and must “fit the facts.”Criminological theories focus on explaining the causes of crime. They explain why some people commit a crime, identify risk factors for committing a crime, and can focus on how and why certain laws are created and enforced. Sutherland (1934) has referred to criminology as the scientific study of breaking the law, making the law, and society’s reaction to those who break the law.Besides making sense of our observations,theories also strive to make predictions. If we understand why crime is happening, we can formulate policies or programs to minimize it.

If criminal behavior were merely a choice, the crime rates would more likely be evenly spread.However, when European researchers started to calculate crime rates in the 19th century,some places consistently had more crime from year to year. These results would indicate criminal behavior must be influenced by something other than choice and crime and must be correlated with other factors.

Positivism is the use of empirical evidence through scientific inquiry to improve society. Ultimately, positivist criminology sought to identify other causes of criminal behavior beyond choice. The basic premises of positivism are measurement, objectivity, and causality. Early positivist theories speculated that there were criminals and non-criminals. Thus, we have to identify what causes criminals. Charles Darwin wrote On the Origin of Species(1859), which outlined his observations of natural selection. A few years later, he applied his observations to humans in Descent of Man(1871); he claimed that some people might be evolutionary reversions to an early stage ofman. Although he never wrote about criminal behavior, others borrowed Darwin’s ideas and applied them to crime.

What Makes a Good Theory?

Pin It! Critical Thinking...A“Good” Theory

Numerous criminological theories attempt to explain why people commit a crime. What makes one better than another? How do we judge theories against each other? The natural and physical sciences mostly agree on the knowledge of their disciplines. However, criminology is interdisciplinary, and many criminologists may not agree on what causes criminal behavior. For instance, Cooper, Walsh, and Ellis (2010) have looked at the political ideology of criminologists and their preferred or favored theories. Even one’s political leanings can influence a person’s set of beliefs about the causes of crime.

We must apply the scientific criteria to test our theories. Akers and Sellers (2013) have established a set of criteria to judge criminological theories: logical consistency, scope,parsimony, testability, empirical validity, and usefulness.Logical consistency is the basic building block of any theory. It refers to a theory’s ability to “make sense”. Is it logical? Is it internally consistent? A theory’s scope refers to its range, or ranges, of explanations. Does it explain crimes committed by males AND females? Does it explain ALL crimes or just property crime? Does it explain the crime committed by ALL ages or just juveniles? Better theories will have a wider scope or a larger range of explanations.

A parsimonious theory is concise, elegant, and simple. There are not too many constructs or hypotheses. Simply put, parsimony refers to a theory’s “simplicity”. A good scientific theory needs to be testable too. It must be open to possible falsification. “Every genuine test of a theory is an attempt to falsify it or to refute it. Testability is falsifiability; but there are degrees of testability: some theories are more testable, more exposed to refutation than others; they take, as it were, greater risks...One can sum up all this by saying that the criterion of the scientific status of a theory is its falsifiability, or refutability, or testability”(Popper, 1965, pp.36-37).

After many tests and different approaches to research, those theories supported by evidence have empirical validity. Thus, according to Gibbs (1990), the verification or repudiation of a given theory through empirical research is the most important principle to judge a theory.

Finally, all theories will suggest how to control, prevent, or reduce crime through policy or programs. The premise of a particular theory will guide policy makers. For example, if a theory suggested that juveniles learn how to commit crime through a network of delinquent peers, policymakers will try to identify juveniles at-risk for joining delinquent subcultures.

Evidence-Based Policies and Procedures in Criminal Justice

In the 1970s, Martin Robinson issued his infamous claim that “nothing works” in rehabilitatingoffenders.In the 1980s, numerous research studies were published that contradicted this claim and proposed alternative approaches to combating crime and effective interventions. Since then, countless researchers, agencies, and even Congress have adopted the need to create comprehensive evaluations of effective programs.

Evidence-based practices mean utilizing research in pursuit of identifying programs, policy initiatives, or practices that work. The Office of Justice Programs (OJP) “considers programs and practices to be evidence-based when their effectiveness has been demonstrated by causal evidence, generally obtained through high-quality outcome evaluations,” and notes that“causal evidence depends on the use of scientific methods to rule out, to the extent possible,alternative explanations for the documented change.”

National research clearinghouses are great resources for systematic literature reviews of effective public programs across a plethora of areas, such as:

• The U.S. Department of Education’s What Works Clearinghouse,
• The U.S. Department of Justice’s CrimeSolutions.gov,
• Blueprints for Healthy Youth Development,
• The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s National Registry of evidence-based Programs and Practices,
• The California Evidence-Based Clearinghouse for Child Welfare,
• What Works in Reentry, and the Coalition for Evidence-Based Policy.With evidence-based practices comes evidence-based policymaking.

Evidence-based policy making identifies what works, enables policymakers to use evidence in deciding budgets and policy, identifies where there are gaps or information is lacking, monitors and measures key outcomes, and continuously uses the information to improve performance and objectives.The goal is to create a policy that can be enforced consistently and can withstand political change.