Pursuit of Education in a Wide Variety

¶ … pursuit of education in a wide variety of area. Two areas of educational pursuit apply to the criminal justice and security management fields. Criminal justice can best be described as ensuring that criminal acts do not go unpunished while the perpetrators of these acts receive the quickest, most efficient and fairest scrutiny of the crimes and are judged accordingly.

In determining what is criminal justice and how does society determine exactly how to administer it, oftentimes research is used to help guide decisions, form policies, and present standards to society. The research will often use different methodologies to determine in which manner to apply justice. These methodologies include quantitative, qualitative, action, and mixed research as the primary sources of analysis.

Qualitative research can be used to help determine perceptions, thoughts and ideals, while action research takes place after certain actions are implemented. Mixed research is used when a variety of methodologies provides the most sensible approach. Quantitative research methodology is used when the researcher wants to present facts and figures using numerals, data that can be charted, counting and percentages.

A recent study provides a good example of quantitative research in use, the study was searching for comparisons of incarceration incidences in different countries. What the study determined was that "the United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world and a more punitive approach to criminal justice" (Kugler, Funk, Braun, Gollwitzer, Kay, Darley, 2013, p. 1071). Using the facts and figures of the study, helped the researchers in this specific study to understand how many more (as a percentage) criminals Americans incarcerate on average compared to other cultures and countries.

This is a good example of gaining knowledge through the understanding of numbers and how they compare. Another recent study that employed quantitative research to some degree within the study assisted the researcher in gaining an understanding of who is most likely to commit certain types of crimes. The study showed that "understanding specialization in crime implies the possibility of increasing the efficiency of the justice system through various measures targeting different groups of offenders (e.g. using selective detention and targeted treatment)" (Tumminello, Edling, Lijeros, Mantegna, Sarnecki, 2013, p. 1).

The Tumminello et al. study showed that there is specialization within crimes based upon the fact that women and men are more inclined to commit different types of crimes. The study provided data to the researchers that allowed them to "detect structural patterns in criminal behavior at the collective level that are not emergent at the individual level" (Tumminello et al., p. 1). In other words, the researchers were able to gather quantitative data that provided them information on who commits what types of crimes, and how those criminals are subsequently incarcerated or punished. Having this type of information allows those in charge of determining the best method for punishment assists them in being more effective. Page two of the Tumminello et al. study hits home this point when the study determined that "creating appropriate distinctions among different criminal acts is difficult" (p. 2) and that the quantitative classifications of the study allows the researchers to "empirically establish how crime categories organize into larger clusters that emerge from individual's criminal behavior" (p. 2). So, in this particular study, using a quantitative methodology made perfect sense.

One other study that provide ammunition for researchers seeking the effectiveness of quantitative research was a study that looked to determine what type of interventions might actually lower the number of young people committing crimes. The study's objective was to determine "whether multisystemic therapy (MST) is more cost-effective than statutory interventions that are currently available for young offenders in England" (Cary, Butler, Baruch, Hickey, Byford, 2013, p. 1). The study used quantitative data regarding treatments provided to young offenders and then compared and analyzed the data to determine which treatments were the most effective and, most importantly, which were the treatments that were most cost-effective overall. The study used the quantitative data to compare "MST with usual services provided by two youth offending teams" and that "service costs were compared to cost savings in rates of criminal re-offending" (p.1).