
Contents
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I. Type of Information Gained from Observations I. Type of Information Gained from Observations
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II. Types of Observational Methods II. Types of Observational Methods
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A. Participant Observations A. Participant Observations
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B. Researcher Observations B. Researcher Observations
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C. Camera Observations C. Camera Observations
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III. Types of Offender Decision Making III. Types of Offender Decision Making
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IV. Insights About Offender Decision Making IV. Insights About Offender Decision Making
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A. Explanations for Criminal Decisions A. Explanations for Criminal Decisions
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B. Characteristics of the Criminal Decision Maker B. Characteristics of the Criminal Decision Maker
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V. Frequency of Criminal Decisions V. Frequency of Criminal Decisions
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VI. Situational Characteristics of Criminal Decision Making VI. Situational Characteristics of Criminal Decision Making
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A. Carrying out the Criminal Decision A. Carrying out the Criminal Decision
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VII. Conclusion VII. Conclusion
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References References
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24 Observational Methods of Offender Decision Making
Get accessMarie Rosenkrantz Lindegaard is a senior researcher at the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement (NSCR) and an Associate Professor at the Department of Sociology of the University of Copenhagen. Her research interests are situational aspects of crime, agency, street culture, qualitative methods, use of camera footage for crime research, and urban ethnography in South Africa.
Heith Copes is a professor in the Department of Justice Sciences at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. His research addresses the criminal decision-making strategies of offenders and understanding the ways that offenders make sense of their lives and crimes.
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Published:06 June 2017
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Abstract
The strength of ethnography is that it combines the insights of what people say about crime with what they do when they make the decision to commit crime. Participant observation has played a key role in ethnographic research on crime, but it has become rare in criminology. This chapter argues that despite this development, new types of camera-based observations are emerging that can potentially bring new life into ethnographic research on crime. The chapter distinguishes between three types of observational methods (participant, researcher, and camera), and it discusses insights that have been gained from each method. Camera observations offer exciting possibilities of gaining insights into what offenders do as criminal events unfold. Although these types of observations may replace researcher observations because of higher detail and reliability, participant observations remain most suitable for the study of the socioeconomic circumstances of offenders and their experiences with committing crimes.
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