This collection provides overviews of nearly 100 key criminal justice research paper topics comprising traditional criminology and its more modern interdisciplinary outgrowths.
The study of criminal justice and criminology has experienced tremendous growth over the last years, which is evident, in part, by the widespread popularity and increased enrollment in criminology and criminal justice departments at the undergraduate and graduate levels, both across the United States and internationally. An evolutionary paradigmatic shift has accompanied this criminological surge in definitional, disciplinary, and pragmatic terms. Though long identified as a leading sociological specialty area, criminology has emerged as a stand-alone discipline in its own right, one that continues to grow and is clearly here to stay. Today, criminology remains inherently theoretical but is also far more applied in focus and thus more connected to the academic and practitioner concerns of criminal justice and related professional service fields. Contemporary study of criminology and criminal justice is also increasingly interdisciplinary and thus features a broad variety of research paper topics on the causes, effects, and responses to crime.
Criminology and Criminal Justice Research Topics
Research Paper Topics on The Discipline of Criminology:
- Criminology as Social Science.
- Criminology and Public Policy.
Research Paper Topics on Correlates of Crime and Victimization:
- Age and Crime.
- Aggression and Crime.
- Citizenship and Crime.
- Education and Crime.
- Employment and Crime.
- Families and Crime.
- Gender and Crime.
- Guns and Crime.
- Immigration and Crime.
- Intelligence and Crime.
- Mental Illness and Crime.
- Neighborhood Influences on Crime.
- Peers and Crime.
- Race, Ethnicity, and Crime.
- Religion and Crime.
- Social Class and Crime.
- Victimization.
- Weather and Crime.
Research Paper Topics on Theories of Crime and Justice:
- Biological Theory.
- Classical Criminology.
- Convict Criminology.
- Criminal Justice Theories.
- Critical Criminology.
- Cultural Criminology.
- Cultural Transmission Theory.
- Deterrence and Rational Choice Theories.
- Feminist Criminology.
- Labeling and Symbolic Interaction Theories.
- Life Course Criminology.
- Psychological Theories of Crime.
- Routine Activities.
- Self-Control Theory.
- Social Construction of Crime.
- Social Control Theory.
- Social Disorganization Theory.
- Social Learning Theory.
- Strain Theories.
- Theoretical Integration.
Research Paper Topics on Measurement and Research in Criminology:
- Citation and Content Analysis.
- Crime Classification Systems: NCVS, NIBRS, and UCR.
- Crime Mapping.
- Crime Reports and Statistics.
- Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN) and Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (ADAM).
- Edge Ethnography.
- Experimental Criminology.
- Fieldwork in Criminology: Observation and Interviews.
- Program Evaluation.
- Quantitative Criminology.
Research Paper Topics on Types of Crime:
- Campus Crime.
- Child Abuse.
- Cybercrime.
- Domestic Violence.
- Elder Abuse.
- Environmental Crime.
- Hate Crime.
- Homicide.
- Human Trafficking.
- Identity Theft.
- Juvenile Delinquency.
- Organizational Crime.
- Prostitution.
- Robbery.
- Sex Offenses.
- Terrorism.
- Theft and Shoplifting.
- White-Collar Crime.
- Wildlife Crime.
Research Topics in Criminology and Justice System:
- Capital Punishment.
- Community Corrections.
- Crime Prevention.
- Criminal Courts.
- Criminal Justice Ethics.
- Criminal Law.
- Criminal Specialization.
- Cultural Arts and Delinquency Reduction Programming.
- Drug Courts.
- Drugs and the Criminal Justice System.
- Felon Disenfranchisement.
- Forensic Science.
- Juvenile Courts.
- Juvenile Justice.
- Mass Media, Crime, and Justice.
- Offender Classification.
- Offender Reentry.
- Police–Community Relations.
- Prison.
- Problem-Solving Courts.
- Public Health and Crime.
- Racial Profiling.
- Restorative Justice.
- Sentencing.
- The Police.
- Victim Services.
- Wrongful Convictions.
- Youth Gangs.
Because just listing suggestions for criminal justice research paper topics will be of limited value for students we have included short topical overviews and suggestions for narrowing those topics and divided them into 6 parts as in the list above. If you’re interested in some topic in the list follow the links below for more information and research paper examples.
Example criminal justice research papers on these topics have been designed to serve as sources of model papers for most criminological topics. These research papers were written by several well-known discipline figures and emerging younger scholars who provide authoritative overviews coupled with insightful discussion that will quickly familiarize researchers and students alike with fundamental and detailed information for each criminal justice topic.
This collection begins by defining the discipline of criminology and observing its historical development (Part I: The Discipline of Criminology). The various social (e.g., poverty, neighborhood, and peer/family influences), personal (e.g., intelligence, mental illness), and demographic (e.g., age, race, gender, and immigration) realities that cause, confound, and mitigate crime and crime control are featured in Part II: Correlates of Crime and Victimization. The research papers in this section consider each correlate’s impact, both independently and in a broader social ecological context. The sociological origins of theoretical criminology are observed across several research papers that stress classical, environmental, and cultural influences on crime and highlight peer group, social support, and learning processes. Examination of these criminological theory research papers quickly confirms the aforementioned interdisciplinary nature of the field, with research papers presenting biological, psychological, and biosocial explanations and solutions for crime (Part III: Theories of Crime and Justice).
Part IV: Measurement and Research in Criminology provides example research papers on various quantitative and qualitative designs and techniques employed in criminology research. Comparison of the purposes and application of these research methods across various criminal justice topics illustrates the role of criminologists as social scientists engaged in research enterprises wherein single studies fluctuate in focus along a pure–applied research continuum. This section also addresses the measurement of crimes with attention to major crime reporting and recording systems.
Having established a theoretical–methodological symmetry as the scientific foundation of criminology, and increasingly the field of criminal justice, Part V: Types of Crime considers a wide range of criminal offenses. Each research paper in this section thoroughly defines its focal offense and considers the related theories that frame practices and policies used to address various leading violent, property, and morality crimes. These research papers also present and critically evaluate the varying level of empirical evidence, that is, research confirmation, for competing theoretical explanations and criminal justice system response alternatives that are conventionally identified as best practices.
Ostensibly, an accurate and thorough social science knowledge base stands to render social betterment in terms of reduced crime and victimization through the development of research–based practices. This science–practitioner relationship is featured, advocated, and critiqued in the research papers of the final section, Part VI: Criminology and the Justice System. Here, the central components of criminal justice research paper topics (law enforcement, courts, and corrections) are presented from a criminology–criminal justice outlook that increasingly purports to leverage theory and research (in particular, program evaluation results) toward realizing criminal justice and related social policy objectives. Beyond the main system, several research papers consider the role and effectiveness of several popular justice system and wrap-around component initiatives (e.g., specialty courts, restorative justice, and victim services).
See also:
ORDER HIGH QUALITY CUSTOM PAPER
Always on-time
Plagiarism-Free
100% Confidentiality
