ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that viability of using complex systems science, commonly called chaos theory, in criminal justice and criminology research. Heavy reliance on complicated mathematical models and a departure from traditional methodologies and theoretical designs prevented the spread of complex systems science to the social sciences for many years. W. Skogan conducted research that could be supportive of using complex systems science in criminological theory. Criminal justice/criminology research has been able to explain a consistently small amount of the variation in crime and an even smaller amount of the variation in most actions of the criminal justice system. With advances in longitudinal analyses and multilevel modeling, criminology has greatly improved the ability to model criminal behavior, reduce crime, or even explain why neighborhoods deteriorate into high-crime areas. Even more so than with the literature on crime, the history of scientific knowledge is lengthy. Non-linear feedback is like the heart during exercise.
