How should crime research be categorized?
I’m thinking about creating weekly directories of new research, categorized by topics
Subscribers may be aware that I’ve been experimenting with directories of research organized by geography, such as the following posts:
To create those directories, I wrote code that helps categorize new research by where it was conducted. These directories were conceived of as tools for journalists and advocates looking for criminal justice and criminology research close to them.
Knowing that I might like to also categorize in different ways, I tried to make the underlying code generic enough that it could handle any sort of category system with multiple layers of subcategories, just so that I could do something like this, like categorizing by topic, such as research about intimate partner violence or human trafficking or financial crimes or policing or sentencing.
I’ve never tried to articulate the way I organize research in my head before, but these new directories would be explicit expressions of that organization. It’s all just floated in my head as general organizing principles. I need to get it out of my head before I capture it in code that will help make these topic directories.
Additionally, different people would categorize things differently based on their own experience, and those systems would be equally or even more valid. I’m also not interested in copying the legal system’s classification system, which wouldn’t allow for great swathes of relevant research.
My own experience is as someone educated in criminology and criminal justice who is trying to make sense of research relevant to those disciplines. That means I know that not all research related to crime is focused on crimes or criminals.
To give just one example, albeit a big one, there’s also the social and political systems responsible for responding to crime. There’s the police, the courts, the correctional system. These systems are supposed to, at least in part, help prevent future crime, so they’re relevant to how we think about the causes of crime. So whatever system I create must have space for research related to these institutions. And that’s to say nothing of how we think about crime, what influences that thinking, or the effects of that thinking on how we try to prevent, manage, or respond to crime.
I’m mostly concerned with organizing the massive flow of new research I see every day to make sense of it for myself and for you. My loose system will evolve over time, but the end goal isn’t to create a comprehensive system, but to help us know where to look to find the new research that’s relevant to us as quickly as possible after publication.
Having said that, I currently see this topic scheme as looking something like this:
Activity (i.e. the crimes themselves)
Violent (e.g. intimate partner violence, sexual assault, terrorism, etc.)
Financial (e.g. fraud, theft, bribery, etc.)
Drug crime (e.g. production, supply chain, trafficking, etc.)
Cybercrime (e.g. technology assisted abuse, computer fraud, malicious hacking, etc.)
[Actors/Agents/?] (e.g. victims, offenders, witnesses, etc.)
Criminal justice system (e.g. police, legislators, courts, corrections, etc.)
Media (e.g. news, entertainment, etc.)
Civil society/policy communities/etc. (e.g. NGOs/nonprofits/advocacy groups, advocates/lobbyists/etc., think tanks, universities, news media, etc.)
Theories/Perspectives/Concepts/Ideas? (e.g. age-crime curve, stigmatization, social/cultural/genetic/etc. influences on behaviour, etc.)
This obviously isn’t anything close to universal or all-inclusive. Nor are the categories fully fleshed out or mutually exclusive.
If I were trying for a scientific classification system like a typology or taxonomy that I could complete and that would stand the test of time, I’d be more concerned with those issues. For example, I could add columns to the system, further breaking up each category and subcategory by other dimensions, such as descriptive and explanatory research. I’m not going to introduce new dimensions like those, not because there wouldn’t be utility in it, but because I get enough headaches as it is and that sounds like a bigger one than it’d be worth.
How would weekly directories split up by topics be useful to you? Or would they be useful at all? Did I leave something glaring out of my rough topic scheme? Has someone already done this in a way that would meet my (your) needs better?
Thoughts?