Criminology Has Serious Limitations

Criminology Research

Is Criminology a Hard Science?

Criminology is a discipline within the social sciences and as such is the study of people (Bhattacherjee, 2012). By comparison, researchers within the natural sciences focus primarily on physical phenomenon, such as the speed of radio waves through different materials or the impact of a drug on blood pressure. Since social science researchers, including criminologists, focus on the behavior of people as individuals and in groups there is inherently less certainty in the conclusions reached. For example, the change in temperature of a beaker of water when exposed to radio waves of a specific energy and frequency would be expected to be exactly the same under the same conditions. Any differences in temperatures would be attributed to either human error or some unnoticed change in the conditions; therefore, causal uncertainty would be an indicator of experimental error. By comparison, understanding the impact of implementing a broken windows policing policy in a high-crime neighborhood would depend on a number of factors, many of which might be unknown to the researchers. This implies that implementing the intervention in the same way in what seems to be identical neighborhoods might still produce different outcomes. The determination of causation in the social sciences is therefore fraught with uncertainty.

In support of this conclusion, broken windows policing will be examined in greater detail. Broken windows policing has been implemented in several major U.S. cities and been credited with reducing crime rates significantly (Sampson, Winship, & Knight, 2013). Indeed, after the New York City's administration implemented broken windows in its boroughs the crime rates did decline. The basic premise of broken windows policy is that visual cues of poor social control, such as broken windows and litter, encourages would-be offenders to believe that low-level offending will be tolerated. The natural assumption would be that removing debris and fixing windows would reduce crime. Investigations into the efficacy of broken windows policing across multiple cities, however, suggest that this policing strategy may have only a marginal impact on crime rates. Instead, the characteristics of the neighborhood and a greater police presence due to broken windows implementation may be more important contributors to the 'success' of broken windows (Sampson, Winship, & Knight, 2013). This level of causal uncertainty is much rarer in physics, astronomy, chemistry, and even medicine.