ABSTRACT
In this chapter I consider some of the main ethical issues in research in criminology and criminal justice, as they are expressed in the relevant literature and as I encountered them in my own work. In order to illustrate these issues in what I hope is a concrete and practical way, I draw extensively on my own research experience as well as the experience of others. This approach is also consistent with the view – developed at length and convincingly in relation to research by Macfarlane (2009) and following the broad arguments of MacIntyre (1985) – that ethics are best understood in terms of the virtues associated with situated social practices. Codes of ethical practice can of course provide important guidance and reminders (and some degree of legal security for universities), but because they are necessarily general and decontextualized they are of little help to researchers wondering in the very act of research what they should do next. As Macfarlane (2009: 3) puts it, ‘Developing an understanding of what to do is always a more challenging prospect than issuing edicts about what it not right’.
