ABSTRACT
Among the most obvious participants of criminological research projects are individuals and groups that have been exposed to violence. Such exposure can potentially be a psychologically traumatic experience for them, regardless of whether they are victims, perpetrators, or witnesses (or all three). Participants of criminological research who have experienced psychological trauma may still be dealing with the consequences of trauma at the time of the research. While there are myriad books and articles about how to conduct fieldwork in criminology, there is a dearth of information about how to work specifically with participants who have experienced psychological trauma. In this chapter, we discuss the ethics of conducting research involving psychological trauma and offer hands-on strategies and considerations to apply before, during, and after a criminology project. We reflect on the ethics and practices regarding the participants, researchers and recipients of the knowledge outcomes. To illustrate, we draw on the experience of the second author (David) who interviewed dozens of direct victims of the violence perpetrated by drug lord Pablo Escobar in Colombia in the 1980s and 1990s and combine these reflections with relevant knowledge from the discipline of psychology.
