Research by subject

Criminology

crim·i·nol·o·gy · crimen: offense, accusation · logos: study

Criminological research focuses on the causes and consequences of crime, delinquency, and victimization, as well as the operation of the criminal justice system — with an emphasis on police, courts, and corrections.

Police officers on a street beside a patrol car

What counts as evidence: Public crime data, official statistics, and peer-reviewed studies — read carefully, because the numbers rarely mean exactly what they seem to.

Use public or anonymized data; don't contact offenders or victims without adult oversight and approval.
Remember that reported crime isn't the same as actual crime — a lot goes unrecorded.
Correlation isn't causation, and neighborhoods aren't the same as the people in them.
Describe groups fairly and avoid language that reinforces stereotypes.

Where it connects

Related areas & concentrations

Criminology draws on the social sciences to explain why crime happens and how societies respond. Those neighbors are good places to find a theory or a dataset.

Related research areas

Sociology & anthropology: how communities and cultures shape behavior
Psychology: individual behavior, development, and decision-making
Political science: law, policy, and how institutions respond to crime

Sample concentration

Exploring & explaining crime and deviance: why rules get broken, and what that means

In the journal

Papers published under criminology

Real student work already published with YRP under this subject — a good model for the scope and style of a strong project.

The Silver Lining Behind the Darkness: Social Media as an Innovative Tool to Combat Sex Trafficking in Southeast Asia (2016)
The Effect of Viewing Psychopathic Characters on Television on the Development of Psychopathic Traits in Children (2017)
The Invisible Culture of Pain and the Opioid Crisis (2019)

Link each title to its full article so readers can click through, as on the source slide.

Where to begin

Four ways into a question

Most criminology papers work through one of these lenses. For a student, the data-driven and review-based ones are the most reachable — and the safest.

Theory

Theories of Crime

Why crime happens — the social, economic, and psychological explanations scholars have proposed.

Which theory best explains a pattern you see in your city's public crime data?

Data

Crime & Data

Patterns in official statistics — trends over time, differences between places, and crime mapping.

How did reported thefts change before and after a local policy shift?

System

The Justice System

How police, courts, and corrections actually operate — and how fairly.

How do sentencing patterns for one offense vary across states?

Harm

Victimization & Prevention

The consequences of crime and what actually works to reduce it.

Does better street lighting relate to lower reported crime in an area?

The hard part

Turning an interest into a question

A topic isn't a research question. Narrow to one place or policy, one measurable outcome, and data you can access without contacting anyone directly.

Start from a pattern you can look up

Public crime data by city, state, or year gives you real evidence without any fieldwork or interviews.

Narrow to one place, time, or policy

Not “why does crime happen” but one neighborhood, one law change, one offense over a set period.

Make it a “how / why” or comparison

Compare two places or two time periods so you have something to explain, not just describe.

Check the data and the ethics

Is the data public, and can you study this without contacting offenders or victims?

Too broad: “Why do people commit crime?”

Workable: “Using public city data, how did reported burglaries change in one neighborhood in the two years after a new streetlight program?”

Doing the work

Methods & where to look

Pair a method you can carry out safely with the official data and literature criminologists actually use.

Common methods

Secondary data analysis: working with existing public crime datasets.
Crime mapping: looking at where and when crime is reported.
Perception surveys: asking about safety or fear of crime, with consent and anonymity.
Policy & case analysis: studying a law or program and its effects.
Systematic review: synthesizing what past studies have found.

Direct work with offenders, victims, or minors is off-limits without formal approval and supervision.

Where to find data

Official data: the FBI Crime Data Explorer (UCR/NIBRS) and the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
Archives: the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data (NACJD) at ICPSR.
What works: the Campbell Collaboration's systematic reviews.
Journals: Criminology and the British Journal of Criminology, via Google Scholar or JSTOR.

Many cities publish open crime data portals — a great, local starting point.

The core skill

Reading crime data critically

Crime statistics are easy to misread. Three habits keep your conclusions honest — and fair.

Source

Ask where a number comes from. Reported crime undercounts real crime — the “dark figure” that never reaches police.

Context

Compare rates, not raw counts, and account for population and reporting differences before you compare places.

Caution

Correlation isn't causation — and never let a pattern become a stereotype about a group of people.

This is a sensitive field: handle crime, victims, and communities with care. Use public, anonymized data, describe people fairly, and work under a teacher's or mentor's guidance.

Cite every dataset and study, and be clear about what your data can — and can't — show.

Start here

Your first-week checklist

Pick a lens — theory, data, the justice system, or victimization.
Write a specific question answerable with data you can access.
Use public or anonymized data — no direct contact without oversight.
Plan for correlation ≠ causation and for gaps in the data.
Find 3–5 sources (FBI Crime Data Explorer and BJS are good starts).
Commit to describing groups fairly, without stereotyping.
Run your plan past a teacher or mentor.