Introduction

Abstract

This book provides a different view of the research process in criminology and criminal justice. It is more like a collection of short stories than a novel that has a beginning, middle, and end. Each of the stories is different, as different as the authors and their backgrounds. A number of themes do come through in many of the contributions. For example, a number of the authors indicate, some explicitly, the value of tenure that permitted them to explore new or complicated issues that would not result in immediate results. Others describe the benefits of mentoring and of persistence and not being discouraged by initial failure. The specific methods used run the gamut from ethnographic studies to research on big (or biggish) data. Despite our reservations about creating pigeonholes for these chapters (so many of them fit into a number of categories!), we can consider five areas into which the chapters can be categorized: those that rely on information obtained from the street; those that generate new data; those that mine extant sources of data in new ways; those that describe analyses of existing data; and those that use visual and geographical tools.