ABSTRACT
Crime and family breakdown are two key concepts that might inform a piece of research. In this chapter, the authors encourage researcher to think about where their ideas about crime originate. They are concerned with where the ideas come from and the relationship of these ideas to lower levels of theory about crime. As Radzinowicz pointed out, there is a disturbing gap between criminology and criminal policy and unfortunately, despite the wealth of criminological knowledge, a relatively populist political approach holds sway. A research idea may develop from a profound personal experience, such as being the victim of a violent crime or from a wider concern with an issue that researcher feel strongly about, for example, trafficking in nuclear arms. Criminologists use theories in order to attempt to find explanations for the phenomena that the authors refer to collectively as 'crime', yet the term 'crime' encompasses many forms of lawbreaking, from individual illegal drug use to organised corporate crime.
