Knowledge Shifts in the Study of Crime and Criminal Justice

在过去的二十年里，美国的监禁率和其他形式的刑事处罚增加了200%。与此同时，根据国家犯罪受害调查，犯罪率几乎保持稳定。越来越多的证据表明，只有考虑到关于犯罪原因和惩罚效果的知识和信念的产生，才能解释刑事惩罚的趋势。在这十年中，这种信念也发生了根本性的转变。例如，他们将罪犯的形象从社会和心理条件转变为理性或天生坏的形象，从改革和治疗策略转变为威慑、报复和丧失行为能力，从自由裁量到强制性司法决策。拟议的研究旨在测量和解释1950年至1992年期间犯罪学和刑事司法研究的知识转变。本项目检验了以下假设：关于犯罪和惩罚的科学知识的发展是以下因素的作用：(1)犯罪学和刑事司法研究专业机构（即大学院系、期刊和专业协会）的出现；(2)政府通过研究资助项目广泛参与这些趋势；(3)罪与罚的政策立场同步变化。研究结果将有助于我们理解刑事司法政策中知识建构与意识形态之间的关系。通过对选定期刊的内容分析来收集数据，并通过对期刊编辑的调查和对资深学者的访谈来验证数据。内容分析的来源是学术期刊上关于犯罪和刑事处罚的3800篇文章的样本。深入分析将使用认知映射方法应用于较小的文章子集。这样建立的数据集将描述性地衡量1950年至1992年间犯罪学知识的实际趋势（使用SPSS/PC+趋势的时间序列分析）。数据集将进一步进行多元因果分析，以检验制度安排对发表知识的假设影响，特别是历史时间、研究者类型、研究机构、资助来源（如果有的话）和发表地点的影响。该数据集稍后将与媒体、政治部门、公众舆论以及刑事政策和惩罚趋势方面的知识变化的其他数据结合起来。

Over the past two decades the United States has experienced an exceptional 200% increase in incarceration rates and other forms of criminal punishment. At the same time crime rates were almost stable according to the National Crime Victimization Survey. There is increasing evidence that the trends in criminal punishment can only be explained if the production of knowledge and beliefs about the causes of crime and effects of punishment is considered. Such beliefs have also undergone radical shifts during this decade. They shifted, for example, from an image of offenders as socially and psychologically conditioned to an image of offenders as rational or innately bad, from reform and treatment strategies to deterrence, retribution and incapacitation, and from discretionary to mandatory judicial decision-making. The proposed study aims at the measurement and explanation of knowledge shifts in criminology and criminal justice studies between 1950 and 1992. This project tests the hypotheses that the development of scientific knowledge about crime and punishment is a function of: (1) the emergence of specialized institutions of criminology and criminal justice studies (i.e., university departments, journals, and professional associations); (2) extensive government involvement in these trends through research funding programs; and (3) simultaneous changes in policy positions on crime and punishment. The findings will improve our understanding of the relationship between the construction of knowledge and ideology in criminal justice policy. Data will be collected through content analysis of selected journals, and validated through surveys of journal editors and interviews with senior scholars. The source for the content analysis is a sample of 3,800 articles on crime and criminal punishment in scholarly journals. In-depth analysis will be applied to a smaller subset of articles using the cognitive mapping approach. The data sets so established will descriptively measure the actual trends in criminological knowledge between 1950 and 1992 (time series analysis using SPSS/PC+ Trends). The data set will further undergo multivariate causal analysis to test the hypothesized impacts of institutional arrangements on published knowledge, especially the impact of historic time, type of researcher, research institution, funding source (if any), and place of publication. This data set will later be combined with other data on knowledge shifts in media, the political sector, public opinion, and trends in criminal policy and punishment.