Publication productivity of criminal justice faculty in criminal justice journals

An important dimension of university faculty life is publication expectation. Often the level of publication productivity is used to assess general program prestige or to evaluate individual faculty performance. The publication rates of faculty in PhD and master-level programs have been unclear. This study examined the publication rates using a general list of criminal justice journals, and a select list of the leading journals, over a five-year period. The faculty members were located in criminal justice programs that granted PhD and master degrees. Publication productivity rates were established for the two different degree level programs, and the institutions with the strongest publication rates were identified. Publication rates are only one factor used in the assessment of program quality and the relationship of publication rates to other program features is discussed.     

Gender differences in research productivity among criminal justice and criminology scholars

Prior research suggests gaps in productivity by gender in the fields of criminal justice and criminology as well as other academic disciplines. Utilizing survey data from a sample of ASC and ACJS members, this study examined the overall extent of disparity in publishing between female and male academics. It also examined the impact of background, departmental, professional, work load characteristics, and other academic factors on publishing. While males published more than females, the disparity was reduced once other relevant variables, such as career length, time devoted to research, rank, and teaching in a program offering a masters or doctorate, were considered. Finally, the factors that influence productivity among male scholars were found to have a similar effect on female scholarship.     

Scholarly influence in criminology and criminal justice journals in 1990-2000

The main aim of this research was to investigate changes in scholarly influence by identifying the most-cited scholars in twenty journals: five American criminology journals, five American criminal justice journals, five international criminology journals, and five international criminal justice journals. The most-cited works of the most-cited scholars were also reported. Results obtained in 2000 were compared with previous findings in 1995 and 1990, and with results obtained from analyzing nine journals in 1996-2000. In 2000, the most-cited scholars were Robert J. Sampson in American criminology journals, Francis T. Cullen in American criminal justice journals, John Braithwaite in international criminology journals, and Robert D. Hare in international criminal justice journals. The expansion from nine to twenty journals benefited international scholars such as John Braithwaite and Richard V. Ericson and scholars in less mainstream areas such as Murray A. Straus. Overall, Robert J. Sampson was the most-cited scholar in these twenty journals in 2000, compared with Lawrence W. Sherman in 1995 and Marvin E. Wolfgang in 1990. The prevalence of citations (the number of different articles in which a scholar was cited) and specialization (where a scholar's influence was based on one or two highly-cited works) were also studied.     

An assessment of the relative impact of criminal justice and criminology journals

The current study was undertaken to provide an impact assessment of criminal justice and criminology journals as an alternative measure to the prestige survey ratings reported by Sorensen, Snell, and Rodriguez (2006). Citations to sixty-seven target journals were tallied from ten top criminal justice and criminology journals. Various impact measures were fairly consistent with one another and the prestige survey ratings, particularly for a “top tier” of journals. With a couple of notable exceptions, a long-standing core of these elite journals has held their relative positions from early impact studies relying on data from the 1970s and 1980s; nevertheless, significant deviations were noted based on the measurement utilized for all but the top journals. Findings from the current study suggested that the quality of journals is multifaceted and warns against employing a scale based on one dimension of journal quality.     

Differences in assessments of relative prestige and utility of criminal justice and criminology journals

Several articles have been written about the relative prestige of journals in criminology and criminal justice. Almost uniformly, however, those rankings have focused on sociology and criminology journals and have generally reflected a sociological orientation. If criminal justice is indeed a separate discipline, such approaches are tantamount to asking psychologists to rate sociological journals within a list of psychology journals. Our approach is first to separate respondents by their degree of identification with criminal justice and their educational orientation. Second, we compile a list of responses to questions about prestige and utility to practitioners across the range of criminal justice and criminology journals. Analyses of these data indicate that there are differences in the way scholars rate journals, based on their identity with criminal justice and their educational orientation. These differences, however, are found in specific journals and in types of journals (i.e., police, corrections, criminal justice) rather than in aggregate perceptions of all criminal justice and criminology journals.     

Conservative ideology in criminology and criminal justice

As often as the label “conservative” is used in criminological and criminal justice books, papers, articles, lectures and discussions, rarely is the substance of what “conservative” might mean raised. Its use as a prejoritive by those who are not conservative clouds the word and the complex of ideas it represents with a negative imagery. The author, a confessed conservative, seeks to dispel that cloud by identifying the common features of contemporary American conservative thought in its five major divisions: secular and theological fundamentalism, core conservatism, conservative pragmatism, and libertarian conservatism. How adherents of each of these five camps impact on criminal justice policy and criminological theory is explained. Proposals for a conservative pedagogy in criminal justice are offered to sympathizers and a conservative who’s who and reading list are provided for further reading.     

Measuring the relative impacts of criminology and criminal justice journals: A research note

Journals can be rated according to a number of subjective and objective criteria. The present paper uses citations of a journal as an index of objective rank. Previous work using this index has several flaws, including a reliance on a single source journal and a lack of adjustments for age and size to its raw citations scores. The present paper uses a longer list of source journals to tabulate citation counts and provides raw impact, age-adjusted impact, and impact factor scores for each of 26 criminal justice/criminology journals. In addition, this study found subjective ratings from previous research on criminology journals to be significant, although not strong predictors of the impact factor, one objective index of journal quality. Little evidence was found for the notion that journal rankings are a function of other variables, including age of the journal or sponsorship by a professional organization.     

Making space for restorative justice in criminal justice and criminology curricula and courses

Restorative justice, rooted in the practices of indigenous people across the globe, has grown exponentially in both theory and practice since its beginnings in Canada in the 1970s. Restorative justice has influenced the interactions between offenders and victims, helped community members address crime and develop self-efficacy, and changed the way some countries rebuild after a history of oppression. Despite these restorative justice influenced changes, many criminology and criminal justice programs pay scant attention to restorative justice in curricula. This paper will examine ways to include restorative justice in criminal justice and criminology curriculum and the challenges involved in the process. The paper will then examine how the Law and Justice Department at Central Washington University has incrementally added restorative justice components to its curriculum, culminating most recently with the addition of a Community and Social Justice course. The paper will conclude with several examples of classroom activities and assignments that have helped connect students with the theory and practice of restorative justice.     

The gendering effects of co-authorship in criminology & criminal justice research

Historically, research from various fields has indicated that females are underrepresented in academic papers. Not only are females less likely to publish relative to males, but they are also less likely to be sole-, co-, and first-authors in journal publications. While this gender discrepancy has become smaller in recent decades, males are still disproportionately represented in academic papers. The current study reviews author characteristics of articles published in the top fifteen criminology/criminal justice journals over a forty-year period (1974–2014). Among the 11,348 articles in the study, results indicated that while female sole- and first-authorship increased throughout the study period, 26.6% of sole-authors were female while 32% were first-authors and composed 33.3% of all co-authors. Further, females were less likely to be sole- and first-authors, less likely to have co-authors, and more likely to publish with other female co-authors.     

Patterns of entry,professional identity,and attitudes toward crime-related education: A study of criminal justice and criminology faculty

In the field of crime-related education, examination of the characteristics of teaching, research, and institutional differences has recently been a concern. This study examines full-time faculty (N=929) and their patterns of entry, including academic degree held, academic major, past academic and agency experience, and type of institution; and the extent to which differing methods of access are associated with attitudes toward research, scholarship, agency practice, academic collegiality, and orientation toward crime-related study. Dual paradigms seem to exist in crime-related education: one centering on teaching, field practice, and professionalism; the other on research, scholarship, and the more traditional values of academe.     

Is there a place for economics in criminology and criminal justice?

It is argued that the study of economics is appropriate for, and would make a significant contribution to, criminal justice degree programs by enriching the understanding and augmenting the technical expertise of students who undertake that study. Economics is based on a very different philosophy of human behavior. From the economist's philosophy has evolved a theory of human behavior which is, to a striking extent, complementary to that of traditional criminology in its choice of endogenous and exogenous variables, and in its assumptions concerning the nature and structure of the relations linking the former to the latter. Methodologically, economics is distinguished from traditional criminology by its greater stress on formal, logical deduction. The discipline also offers, through econometrics, a powerful instrument for empirically estimating and testing theoretical prepositions. A survey of recent criminological research that uses the economist's paradigm is provided.     

Institutional affiliation of authors in selected criminal justice journals

Publication in professional journals provides both individual and institutional rewards, contributing to the prestige of authors and of colleges and universities with which they are affiliated. Faculty publications are often regarded as important factors in the creation and maintenance of institutional prestige. A survey of six criminal justice journals revealed that the majority of institutions with recognized criminal justice doctoral programs were represented by faculty publications. On the other hand, the list of academic institutions with which published authors were affiliated included many institutions without criminal justice doctoral programs. The data also revealed that slightly over one-quarter of the published material in the selected list of journals had been authored by individuals not affiliated with academic institutions.     

What methods are most frequently used in research in criminology and criminal justice?

Articles published in seven leading criminology and criminal justice journals were coded with regard to the research methods used, focusing on the general research designs, data-gathering methods, and statistical analysis techniques employed. The results indicated that survey research was by far the dominant mode of acquiring criminological information, that cross-sectional nonexperimental designs still predominated, and that multivariate statistical methods were the norm. The findings could aid criminology and criminal justice faculty in devising graduate methods curricula that reflected the state-of-the-art as currently practiced by criminological researchers.     

Citation analysis of randomized experiments in criminology and criminal justice: a research note

In recent years multiple studies have used citation analysis as a way to examine the most cited scholars and works in criminology and criminal justice and its subfields. This study is the first to focus on the most cited randomized experiments in criminological research. Using citation counts from both Social Science Citation Index and Google Scholar, and multiple sources of randomized experiments, I present the most cited experiments in six areas: policing, courts, corrections, schools, community, and early prevention. Experiments published in non-criminological (e.g., medical) journals tend to be the most cited, and early prevention research is generally cited most frequently of the six categories. I conclude by considering possible reasons why certain experiments are more cited than others.     

Schizophrenia: Causes,crime, and implications for criminology and criminal justice

This paper is aimed at criminologists and criminal justicians seeking to understand their role in educating law enforcement and correctional personnel who must deal with the mentally ill. It is motivated by William Johnson's (2011) recent call for rethinking the interface between mental illness, criminal justice, and academia, and his call for advocacy. We concur with his concerns, and insist that this rethinking must necessarily include grounding in the etiology of mental illness (specifically, with schizophrenia) as it is currently understood by researchers in the area. Advocacy must go hand in hand with a thorough knowledge of the condition of the people for whom we are advocating. We first examine major etiological models of schizophrenia, emphasizing the neurodevelopmental model that incorporates genetics, neurological functioning, and immunological factors guided by the assumption that the typical criminologist/criminal justician has minimal acquaintance with such material. We then address the link between schizophrenia and criminal behavior, and conclude with a discussion of the implications for criminology and criminal justice.     

The quality of doctoral programs in deviance,criminology, and criminal justice: An empirical assessment

While information regarding the doctoral programs in any discipline is of obvious and considerable relevance both to those in the discipline and to those seeking access to the best possible sites for graduate training, our knowledge about the quality of doctoral programs continues to be based on little more than speculation and highly ambiguous measures of institutional or departmental prestige. This study attempts to fill this gap for those who have special interests in the related fields of deviance, criminology, and criminal justice by ranking the thirty-six most significant doctoral programs in the nation by means of data derived from the Social Science Citation Index. Perhaps the most striking of our findings—and certainly to us the most distressing finding—is that those departments ranked by our measures as being the highest quality are consistently those which exist within the broader structure of departments of sociology. Given our firm conviction that the discipline of criminology is far, far more than that aspect of it which is closely related to issues of substantive significance to the field of sociology, we can only speculate that those in leadership positions in the growing number of independent schools or departments of criminology or criminal justice are not meeting their obligations to the discipline whose vitality and prospects depend so heavily on the quality of their judgment.     

Criminal justice faculty and criminal justice students: A case for the missing data

This article reviews the most current criminal justice education research. It examines the interrelationship between the work of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, the Joint Commission on Criminology and Criminal Justice Education and Standards, and the National Advisory Commission on Higher Education for Police, and describes and compares some of their more important findings. Discussed are types of criminal justice programs; characteristics of criminal justice faculty, particularly in terms of earned academic degrees; agency work experience; commitment to research and teaching; types of criminal justice curricula, as typified by certain educational philosophies; and criminal justice students. Although this article notes several areas with which future research might become fruitfully involved, the area in need of most immediate attention, and the area that current research has all but ignored, is the criminal justice student.     

Finding fit: The nature of a successful faculty employment search in criminal justice

While the process of finding employment in academia has always been a daunting task for the job candidate, in recent years, in the criminal justice discipline, the process of finding an acceptable candidate to fill a university vacancy has become an equally formidable problem for the employer. This research addresses this reality from the perspectives of both potential employers and employees. Job candidates applying for a university position in 2005, and universities soliciting for hires in criminal justice during the same time frame were surveyed in relation to a variety of issues surrounding their respective search procedures. The primary goal of the research was to determine what factors were associated with perceptions of a successful job search. Suggestions about “successful” searching are offered.