Relationship of Federal Funding to Criminology and Policing Research in the Social Sciences

• NCJ Number: 70035
• Author(s): J Thomas
• Date Published: 1980
• Length: 280 pages
• Sale Source: UMI Dissertation Services
• Publication Type: Thesis/Dissertation
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: Michigan State University - Doctoral Dissertation

Annotation

The dissertation examines Federal support of criminal justice research, particularly policing studies, to assess ideologies underlying the production of knowledge and politicization of research by government funding.

Abstract

Issues arising from the increasing sponsorship of social research by private and government grants are discussed from a Marxist philosophical orientation, followed by a review of the literature on state and private funding and a chronology of Federal support of knowledge production. In order to analyze relationships between government power and research undertaken by government organizations, the funding decisions for the National Institute of Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice (NILECJ) were examined. Key NILECJ personnel, congressional aides, and other persons related to NILECJ activities were interviewed in 1979 and legislative sessions were observed. Legislation, policy documents, and agency correspondence were analyzed. The study found that funded research could not be explained simply as a direct expression of government power, but organizational processes and decisions were determined by many factors, including individual discretion, sub rosa rules, and tacit understandings among individuals. These findings suggest that criminal justice research is politicized, but that this reflects ideological perspectives of the research community as much as the Federal Government. A second research strategy used a precise coding instrument to analyze the content of funded and nonfunded policing studies in six sociological and criminal justice journals between 1960 and 1977. According to this assessment, Federal funding does not generate research results that are more politicized than nonfunded research, and any ideological biases stem from the research activity itself rather than the influence of government sponsorship. Data from the content analysis is summarized in tables. Since the sources of research politicization appear to lie much deeper than the funding process, further research should explore factors which mediate between government activity and society and then develop a sociology of knowledge. The appendixes contain a description of the content analysis methodology. A bibliography is provided. (Author abstract modified)