Research Proposal

CRIMINAL JUSTICE 2

This assignment to help you get the ball rolling on the beginning stages of your research proposal. For this assignment, you are to address the following questions in 2-3 double-spaced pages with 1" margins (all sides) and 12 point font. Your heading should be no longer than one line, and should include the following: name, course, and assignment #. Please number each response, and submit your assignment in .doc, .docx, or .rtf format. Assignments submitted in Mac files or .pdf format will not be accepted. Make sure that you follow the directions carefully.

1.  What social science topic are you interested in designing a research project on? Why this topic?

2.  Develop four questions that you might investigate about the topic you selected. Each question should reflect a different research motive: Descriptive, exploratory, explanatory, and evaluative.

3. Of the four research questions, which one interests you the most? Would you prefer to attempt to answer that question using quantitative or qualitative methods? Why? 

Please, choose one of these narrow topics (Does Incarceration Reduce Crime) or (Incapacitation effect) rather than (Criminal Justice).

Instructor

Name

Institution

Assignment#

1. The topic of my interest is criminal justice. It deals with government institution which is built to ensure good social control as well as correct those that violate laws set to abide by. The study of criminal justice is to help in ensuring effectiveness in the department of criminal justice in any country. It focusses on the correctional centers and studies their effectiveness in ensuring social control. A study of this discipline also helps in giving practical ideas to the department of criminal justice which will ensure effective achievement of its roles and responsibilities.

The reason for choosing these research topic is to do further research on how criminal justice can be of help to any society or nation. There are topics that still require more research so as to offer effective correction and social control by the criminal justice. A concern is that most of the prisoners that are released from jail continue with their law breaking habits. These questions the effectiveness of these correctional centers and the criminal justice department. This pushes for more research to be done in this area so as to prove better ideas and come with effective methods of achieving the roles issued to the criminal justice department.

2. The research is based on four questions which will cover the four research motives namely; Descriptive, exploratory, explanatory, and evaluative. The descriptive question of the research will be on the effectiveness of correctional centers. These are a question that seeks to find out how effective the correctional centers are. It will aid in providing better results to correctional centers on how to offer a correction to inmates. Our second question on this topic of criminal justice will be the exploratory question on how many deaths occur in most prisons. The question is aimed at looking on how inmates die and the result of their death.

Our third question will be an explanatory question. The question why do most inmates get back to their law breaking habits after they are released. This question will provide us with an explanation on why these is so. Research on this topic will give us insight into how effective are correctional centers. Then lastly the final question will be an evaluative question. Should prisons be privatized or allowed to be owned by the government? These question will offer an evaluation of the benefit of either privatizing prisons or not. It will prove and give an evaluation on the two decisions to be made and which decision will offer better results.

3. The best of the question among the four is on whether prisons should be privatized or not. These are a question that has had many opinions yet without research done to prove the better decision between the two. Most people argue on this topic but lack to give reasons or facts that will support their arguments. However for us to offer an effective correction to law breakers, such questions require research to be done and the decision to be applied chosen out of knowledge. This will help our correctional centers, and the criminal justice department offers quality services.

Looking at our question, the type of answer given should be done qualitatively rather than quantitative. These are because the aim of these question is to help the criminal justice department provide quality and effective correction to law breakers. This calls for a more qualitative analysis of our question basing our argument on the two sides of the question. Do prisons offer better correctional services when under private control or when under the control of the government? This analysis will require a more qualitative approach rather than using a quantitative method.

Feedback:

(2) Descriptive questions ask: Who? What? When? Where? How? Examples: How many correctional institutions are there in the United States? How many prisons are in the U.S.? How many jails are there in the U.S.?

Exploratory questions ask: What is going on here? (see page 9). Example: How are correctional institutions viewed by the American public?

Evaluative questions determine the effects of a social program, policy, or intervention. Example: Do prison-operated GED programs reduce recidivism? Do private prison GED programs reduce recidivism?

(3) If you are interested in the benefits, limitations, and consequences of privatization of prison services, that would be a more exploratory question, which would require qualitative research methods.