• Roles of the ResearcherJustice image by MVit from Fotolia.com
  
  The roles of a criminal justice researcher are multiform and complex. In general, the researcher in this field must think as a scientist. The goal is to understand the variables that contribute to criminal behavior with the final end of eliminating those variables though education and public policy. Thus it hardly needs saying that the researcher here is an activist. This is never to harm his objectivity, but the ultimate goal is moral: to alleviate crime and "correct" the criminal mind and the variables that help create it.
  
  

Objectivity

• While the researcher should be considered an activist with a moral end goal, the methods to that goal, the means, should be purely scientific (or as scientific as possible under given circumstances). Objectivity is the key. Part of that objectivity is "going native," or seeking to think and feel like a criminal. This is necessary to understand the impact of certain variables such as broken homes, availability of drugs or even media manipulation on crime. Going native is an objective process because it should be done without judgment. These people should be seen as victims whose free will has been vitiated or perverted rather than sick people who should be pitied.
  
  

Types of Participation

• There are four types of participation when performing qualitative research. In this case, qualitative means that the researcher is interested in the content of the criminal's life or methods. Where he came from, why he commits crime, and how can one "get to" such a person are the basic types of questions here. The four types of roles are first, a complete participant, or one who seeks to "go native" 100 per cent, to see the criminal mind from the inside. The second type is the participant as observer, where the criminals under study realize that this participant is an observer, but the observer is also "going native" to a lesser degree. The observer as participant stresses the "scientific side" of this type of research, since the researcher is known as an outsider, yet still wants to see the criminal organization and mind first hand. Lastly, there is the purely scientific observer, where there is no participation in the criminal mind, but merely a detached observer. All of these research approaches are controversial, since a researcher really cannot be "100 percent" involved, while at the same time cannot be "100 percent" detached.
  
  

Quantitative Research

• Quantitative research roles are more scientific and experimental, and would really be involved with the very least amount of "going native." In this case, survey data and economic statistics are the real substance of this kind of research, and programs and ideas are tested using these data. Experiments involve a pre-interview process and a post-interview process when testing a certain program, to see if the mind of the criminal or at-risk person has changed. In this case, the role is to be a pure observer seeing cause and effect.