Conducting qualitative research in criminology

This selective review considers criminology's engagement with qualitative research, giving some background on criminology as a discipline, and considering some methodological issues by discussing examples. The first section focuses on complaints about political conservatism, and a bias towards positivism and quantitative research. The next two sections consider some methodological issues that arise when conducting studies about criminal justice practitioners and offenders. Criminology is distinctive as a mostly applied subject that concerns the work of practitioners in the criminal justice system, and because its subject matter includes "criminal" behaviour. For the first topic, there is discussion of data obtained in a research project about bail decision-making and pretrial services. For the second, there is a critical appreciation of Alice Goffman's (2014) On the Run. A fourth section discusses discourse analysis, as conducted by conversation analysts. This is an under-appreciated research tradition in criminology, but continues to produce work of value, such as The Suspect's Statement by Martha Komter (2019). The review also considers the issue of innovations, through considering the candidate fields of gesture studies and cultural criminology. The review demonstrates how qualitative research is diverse, intellectually interesting, thoroughly contestable and potentially useful in each section.