ABSTRACT
Criminology and criminal justice have a rich legacy of qualitative research. Indeed, much of what we know about offenders and the criminal justice system comes from early research using various qualitative designs. Despite an illustrative past, qualitative methods are largely underrepresented in contemporary criminological and criminal justice research and play but a small part in the development of the field today. Recent evaluations of the relative distribution of methods in criminology and criminal justice journals certainly evidence qualitative criminology’s secondary status (Copes, Brown, & Tewksbury, 2011; Tewksbury, DeMichele, & Miller, 2005). Even with this underrepresentation in the literature, qualitative methods are still considered by most to serve essential purposes in studying crime and the criminal justice system, as qualitative criminologists have made significant contributions to the development of theoretical criminology and criminal justice practice in recent years.
