Research methods in criminal justice

Criminal Justice -- Research Methods

Short-term Counseling for Juvenile Criminals

Extant literature on criminals, adults and juveniles alike, showed that the threat of incarceration has not been an effective deterrent to committing crime. For novice and teenage criminals, in fact, the idea of being incarcerated has been synonymous to being the "rite of passage," an event in a teenage offender's life that is necessary for him to be considered a 'bona fide' offender/criminal. However, recent studies on crime deterrence and novice criminals uncovered the usefulness of short-term counseling as an alternative approach to deterring crime, as compared to incarceration.

In this research proposal, the usefulness of short-term counseling will be further evaluated, as this approach will be proposed as the primary approach/intervention and deterrent against criminal behavior among teenagers/novice criminals. This short-term counseling will be conducted in weekly one-hour sessions for a period of six (6) weeks. The focus of the study would be, short-term counseling is an alternative approach to effectively deterring commitment of crime among novice, teenage (male) criminals.

The primary hypothesis to be tested in this proposed study is: short-term counseling is an effective deterrent to crime commitment among male novice criminals. Other possible objectives or hypotheses to be included in the analysis are the following: (i) short-term counseling is generally applicable to male novice criminals, regardless of his socio-demographic profile, (ii) identifying which specific components of short-term counseling are most helpful to the participants/counseling patients, and (iii) comparative analysis of effectiveness of short-term counseling vs. incarceration based on reported and self-reported behavior of male novice criminals.

The study will use a quantitative research design, using experimental research as the methodology for the study. Focus of the study will be males within the age group of 15-25 years old, with equal split across ethnic membership/race. Controlling for this variable is critical as this study will need to establish if there are differences in the intervention (short-term counseling) results across race or ethnic membership. The experimental group will participate in short-term counseling sessions, as described earlier in this proposal (i.e., weekly one-hour sessions for six weeks). The counseling sessions will be conducted to two kinds of experimental group: first, novice criminals who are currently incarcerated, and second, male teenagers who have a history of committing criminal offenses. Names will be generated from the county or state's prison institution, to be randomly selected, but must be qualified given the initial criteria set.