Gender Inequality and Knowledge Production in Criminology and Criminal Justice

Studies show that co-authorship of scholarly articles in criminology and criminal justice journals are stratified by gender: males are more likely to publish with males, females are more likely to publish with males. Increasing co-authorship has led some to claim that the intellectual contributions of females may be devalued, systematically putting them at a disadvantage for tenure and promotion decisions. Despite the importance of understanding gender inequality in knowledge production, no studies have examined the mechanisms that produce this outcome. Using data from 656 publications in five journals, we examine the structure of gender and co-authorship by testing two mechanisms that may generate a gendered distribution among scholarly articles. Although females exhibit a greater proclivity toward co-authorship with males, we show that this is a consequence of higher productivity among males. The tendency for males to have higher productivity than females in publications actually increases the likelihood of cross-gender collaboration.     

The Invisible Scholar: Authors of Legal Scholarship in Criminology and Criminal Justice Journals

This study assesses the authorship of legal scholarship within 20 criminology and criminal justice (CCJ) journals from 2005 to 2015, examining trends over time and variation across journals in the prevalence of sole-authorship and the mean number of authors and identifying the most prolific authors of legal scholarship published in CCJ journals. The study thus sheds light on the extent of collaboration among CCJ legal scholars and identifies CCJ legal scholars who have remained largely invisible due to their focus on a marginalized subfield.     

Faculty Employment Trends in Criminology and Criminal Justice

The academic job search process is perhaps one of the most important and stressful events for scholars hoping to gain full‐time employment in academia. The stress that this process induces is due, at least in part, to the fact that candidates are forced to make important, life‐changing decisions with very little information. The goal of the present study is to provide an update on faculty employment trends in criminology and criminal justice by examining faculty position announcements posted in The Chronicle of Higher Education (CHE) from August 2004 to July 2009. Findings reveal that candidates seeking assistant professor positions will have the most choice, as positions posted at this rank make up the largest category of advertisements. Furthermore, when a specialization was included in the announcement, most departments sought those with a law enforcement focus, followed by generalists.     

Measuring Journal Prestige in Criminal Justice and Criminology

Recent years have seen an increased reliance on the Thomson Reuters Journal Impact Factor (JIF) as a method of evaluating the prestige of academic journals. While the JIF has existed for many years, the increased use of technology to track publications and citations has resulted in other methods of measuring prestige, including Google Scholar’s H-index and Elsevier’s Cite Score. It is unclear, however, whether these “objective” methods of evaluation are correlated with the journals’ reputations among scholars. This paper compares objective and subjective evaluations of journals in criminal justice and criminology among a sample of ASC and ACJS members. Our findings indicate that subjective evaluations of experts are more strongly correlated with Google’s H-Index and Elsevier’s Cite Score than with impact factors. We conclude that for criminal justice and criminology scholars, Thomson Reuters’ JIF may not be the best measure of quality.     

Graduate Education in Criminology or Criminal Justice: Assessing Course Requirements

Although some have claimed that criminal justice and criminology have arrived as disciplines, recent research reveals that there is little consistency amongst Master's programs. This paper replicates and extends previous research into curricular requirements. The required course curricula of United States programs offering a Master's degree in criminal justice or criminology are described. This research identifies correlates of specific course requirements and provides a discussion of the current and future state of criminal justice and criminology graduate education.     

Persona Non Grata: The Marginalization of Legal Scholarship in Criminology and Criminal Justice Journals

Recently, concern has been voiced within the academy regarding the marginalization of legal scholarship within the criminology and criminal justice (CCJ) discipline. Although conventional wisdom and anecdotal evidence indicate that it is difficult to get legal scholarship published in CCJ journals, there is a dearth of empirical evidence on the representation of legal scholarship in CCJ journals. The present study assesses the representation of legal scholarship in 20 CCJ journals from 2005 to 2015, examining both trends over time and variation across journals. Findings indicate legal scholarship comprises a very small portion of articles published, there has been a steep decline in the number of legal articles published in recent years, and the average number of legal articles per year is very low for nearly all of the journals in the sample. The implications of the marginalization of legal scholarship within the CCJ discipline are discussed.     

Exploring the Scholarly Output of Academic Organization Leadership in Criminology and Criminal Justice: A Research Note on Publication Productivity

A number of studies analyzing publication productivity of criminology and criminal justice scholars have emerged in recent years. More specifically, this body of literature applies varied cross‐sectional and longitudinal methodological approaches to demonstrate the publication productivity of scholars. Furthermore, these studies often diverge in their operationalization of the key construct of interest (publication productivity); however, one relative consistency is the list of “elite” criminology and criminal justice journals. This study seeks to explore the elite publication productivity among recent executive board members of the American Society of Criminology and the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences along with the board members of Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences’ regional affiliate associations. Comparisons are made between and within organizations/associations, and individual board member rankings are also presented. The results of this study indicate that publishing in the elite criminology and criminal justice journals is rare and there is variation across organizations/associations and variation among their respective members in the rate of publishing in these elite journals. Suggestions for future research examining publication productivity are also discussed.     

Criminology and Criminal Justice Hit Parade: Measuring Academic Productivity in the Discipline

Previous research assessing the productivity of criminology and criminal justice (CCJ) scholars has sought to determine the overall most productive scholars based on various measures (e.g. total articles published, total cites, and articles per year). While such lists may be important for those who rank high, they may be best used to establish benchmarks for the discipline. To date, research examining the stars in CCJ has focused on overall stars. The aim of the current research is to highlight the most productive scholars (in CCJ doctoral programs), but to do so based on academic rank. As such, our sample is more inclusive than others that have assessed highly productive scholars in the field. By disaggregating productivity measures by academic ranks, it is possible to determine rising stars in the discipline as well as top stars overall. Additionally, and we think more importantly, such rankings give insights into the state of the discipline.     

Striking Out on Its Own: The Divergence of Criminology and Criminal Justice from Sociology

As education budgets shrink and interest in criminal justice at the collegiate level expands, large classes are being implemented in colleges and universities that traditionally have offered only small ones. If increasing criminal justice class sizes are inevitable, it is crucial that we gain an understanding of how large classes are currently taught and the extent to which these teaching techniques are employed in large criminal justice classes. This paper reports on an exploratory survey of criminal justice programs that ascertained the extent to which large classes are being offered, the organization of these courses, and how they are evaluated. These data enable us to identify current practices, speculate on the future of large classes in the criminal justice field and let us document how university/college characteristics are related to the prevalence, structure, and nature of large courses.     

Everything Old is New Again: The Criminology/Criminal Justice Freshman Research Seminar

This is a report of an action-research project undertaken in tandem with the development of a new freshman seminar in criminology and criminal justice. In the freshman seminar the goal is to teach the research, critical thinking and writing skills that are the underpinnings of scholarship and good citizenship. Utilizing a unique approach, this class focuses on resources available through the University library and is taught by a professor, two librarians and a graduate teaching assistant. We hypothesize that freshmen who experience this seminar will show improvement in critical thinking skills, and that this will contribute to greater levels of academic success. This report describes the educational innovation (seminar) in sufficient detail to make replication possible, and presents preliminary findings that indicate the seminar enhances research and writing skills, fosters ability to think critically, and has a positive influence on students’ academic careers.     

Lawyers Practicing Medicine: Criminal Justice,Criminology, Sociology and Differential Curricula

Recently there has been a vigorous dialogue over the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences (ACJS) academic standards pertaining to the role of JDs within criminal justice academic programs. It is a next logical step to open a discussion on a related aspect of the ACJS standards: “doctorates in a closely related field.” This discussion should center on how “closely” the “closely related fields” should be. This article examines the relationship between an education in sociology and criminology/criminal justice programs respectively by comparing the general curricular requirements, undergraduate and graduate, in a selection of sociology and criminology and criminal justice programs. This analysis indicates that there is a great deal of similarity within the sociology curricula, which contain sociologically oriented classes and criminology/criminal justice curricula, which contain criminologically oriented courses, but there is little overlap in course offerings across these two academic areas. Specifically, sociology graduates are not exposed to a meaningful number of criminology/criminal justice classes.     

h-Index and m-Quotient Benchmarks of Scholarly Impact in Criminology and Criminal Justice: A Preliminary Note

Because Scopus and metrics like the h-index and m-quotient have become increasingly popular for assessing the impact of social science scholarship, criminology and criminal justice (CCJ) departments may be tempted to use those metrics when making important decisions like tenure and promotion. However, since no discipline-wide standards based on those metrics yet exist, CCJ departments have no comparative basis for interpreting the results of citation analyses of a particular faculty member’s scholarship. To identify what a set of disciplinary standards might look like, we used Scopus and calculated mean and median h-index and m-quotient values for faculty members (n?=?504) in CCJ Ph.D. granting departments (n?=?35) by rank and for editorial board members (n?=?91) of Criminology, Justice Quarterly, and the Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency. Our results illustrate how comparative disciplinary standards could be developed and used by those in CCJ departments to assess the impact of faculty members’ scholarship.     

Building Legal Competency: Foundations for a More Effective Criminology and Criminal Justice Discipline

This article argues for the need to build legal competency in the discipline of criminal justice and criminology through incorporating law courses in its PhD program curriculum, whether as black letter law (i.e. criminal law, criminal procedure, courts), sociology of law, or socio-legal studies (i.e. law and society courses). Through requiring law courses as a necessary and integral part of the curriculum, and recognizing the mainstream impact of these courses, the discipline stands to enrich the field of legal studies in criminology and criminal justice. The discipline’s need and demand for law trained tenure track faculty with PhD credentials can only be met through consistent law course offerings.     

Press Rankings in Criminology/Criminal Justice: A Preliminary Assessment of Book Publisher Quality

This research examined press rankings in criminology and criminal justice (C/CJ). Based on a large sample of respondents (N = 812) from the American Society of Criminology and the American Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, the authors solicited quality and familiarity rankings on 81 presses that publish in the area of C/CJ. The research revealed that university presses such as Oxford, Cambridge, University of Chicago, and Harvard University dominated the quality rankings. On the other hand, commercial academic presses such as McGraw‐Hill, Sage, and Prentice‐Hall dominated the familiarity rankings. Commercial academic presses including Prentice‐Hall and Sage were the presses most desired by scholars for future book publishing plans. The authors also discuss the significance of the findings for faculty in C/CJ.     

The Most Prolific Female Scholars in Elite Criminology and Criminal Justice Journals, 2000-2010

There has been a steady stream of research exploring the impact of scholars' research within criminology/criminal justice journals (CCJ), but only a small number of studies have examined the impact of female scholars in particular. Extending that line of work, the present study identifies the most productive sole and lead female authors published in eight top-ranked CCJ journals between 2000 and 2010. Findings reveal that individual ranks of the female scholars are relatively stable when adjusting for frequency and journal impact factor. However, there is more movement in the ranks when they are adjusted based on the year the PhD. degree was earned. Consistent with previous research including both males and females, a handful of female scholars, in particular Robin Engel, Beth Huebner, Jodi Lane, and Nicole Leeper Piquero appear to be responsible for a large portion of work in the selected eight elite CCJ journals.     

Criminology/Criminal Justice Representation in the Discipline of Sociology: Changes between 1992 and 2002

This paper examines changes in the representation of criminology, as an area of specialization, in the discipline of sociology between 1992 and 2002. Utilizing the ASA Guide to Graduate Programs in Sociology, we note faculty areas of specialization. We expect that criminology will appear more often as a specialty area in 1992 than 2002. All full‐time faculty in U.S. graduate programs in sociology are included in the analyses. We found no significant change in listing criminal justice as a specialty between 1992 and 2002. Our findings suggest that faculty with terminal degrees from less prestigious institutions and those who teach in less prestigious institutions are more likely to list criminology as a specialty area.     

Changes in the Most-Cited Scholars and Works Over 25 Years: The Evolution of the Field of Criminology and Criminal Justice

Cohn and Farrington’s work in citation analysis has examined scholarly influence within criminological research for over 25 years. The current analysis tracks the ten most-cited scholars and each scholar’s most-cited works in four international criminology journals and six American criminology and criminal justice journals over twenty-five years and five time periods—1986–1990, 1991–1995, 1996–2000, 2001–2005, and 2006–2010. This approach extends the traditional approach to citation analysis by documenting increases and decreases in individual citation careers as well as in the most-cited scholarly contributions of the most-cited scholars during a period of significant growth in criminology. The most-cited works mostly fall within the areas of developmental and life-course criminology and criminal careers, reflecting the importance of these topics in criminology.     

Faculty Diversity and Program Standing in Criminology and Criminal Justice: Findings for 31 Doctoral Programs in 2008

Ashby's Law of Requisite Variety states that variance prepares systems for daily activities and unforeseeable events, suggesting that academic departments comprising faculty from multiple institutions and disciplines would better adapt to ever‐changing environments. This study outlines the disciplinary heritage of full‐time tenure‐stream faculty (N = 495) within criminology and criminal justice doctoral programs (N = 31), then examines the degree to which those programs adhere to Ashby's principle. The study ranks programs on both institutional and disciplinary variances, and how well the programs balance those competing interests. Findings revealed that programs were quite mixed on both variance measures but that variance rankings had little association with how peers rated programs for 2009, in that highly ranked programs appeared with similar frequencies at both the top and bottom of variance rankings. Thus, it appears national respect is not dependent on the variance of faculties with respect to institutional and disciplinary heritage.