Agency Research: To Be or Not to Be?

Abstract

Although agencies in the crime and delinquency field have discovered the worth of social researchers, employment of such specialists will probably present many problems. An immediate and obvious one is that of finding sufficient money to pay for researchers and their staffs. A more fundamental problem is the degree of freedom that agencies will tolerate in their researchers. It is questionable that many agencies will permit their research ers to study many of the highly controversial issues being raised about criminal justice systems today. Most agency-sponsored research will continue to be essentially noncontroversial and "company-oriented." And many first-rate social researchers will not be interested in doing such technical work, at least not for very long.