Qualitative Criminology

A friend once relayed an anecdote of a preschooler referred to psychologists for repeatedly painting “dark” pictures during art and craft. The assumption was that this reflected something sinister within the child or his familial context. After various “tests”, one of the psychologists simply asked the boy: “Why do you always use black paint?” And the child replied: “Because from where I sit, that’s the only colour I can ever reach”.Qualitative Criminology: Stories from the Field shows in clear and engaging fashion how and why such inquiry is fundamental to the criminological endeavour - that qualitative research equates to infinitely more than accessing, collecting and arranging (to paraphrase the editors) ‘bits of talk’. With sustained and reflexive reference to contributors’ own experiences, the book demonstrates how to ethically give voice to the complex personal, social, cultural and economic dimensions of crime typically obscured by statistics, political point scoring, sound bites, and the like. The book makes a timely and original contribution to the field and its depth and diversity of material will be of immeasurable value to students and scholars alike. - Mark Halsey, Associate Professor of Criminal Justice, Flinders University, Australia This book is precisely what criminology needs. As much an art as a science, qualitative research can’t be learnt from a textbook, yet student researchers are crying out for a resource to help them think through their fieldwork. Rather than providing a prescriptive ‘how to’ recipe, then, this fascinating book provides the ‘stories’ behind the stories. It may be the only way to teach qualitative criminology; it is certainly the most engaging. - Shadd Maruna, author of Making Good: How Ex-Convicts Reform and Rebuild Their Lives, and Director, Institute of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Queen’s University Belfast