Effects Negative Evidence in Qualitative Criminal Research - Essay Example

?Qualitative Analysis: Effects Negative Evidence in Qualitative Criminal Research Qualitative Analysis; Effects Negative Evidence inQualitative Criminal Research Qualitative research is a vital tool in criminal profiling. In most cases, it reduces uncertainty especially when an offense or crime is proving difficult to solve. Qualitative research may sometimes take a structured or semi-structure and even sometimes-unstructured questions or interviews (Faherty, 2008). Since the targeted persons are never trained or inducted on how they could respond to these interview questions, most people tend to answer these questions in the best ways known to them; thereby, sometimes ending up providing irrelevant responses (Starparu, 2011). However, most of these forms of answers sometimes provide additional information that may be vital for the research. Therefore, qualitative research is an essential tool in evidence based policing. If the offenders are involved in the interview or research, it should be noted that these characters tend to provide vague verbal expressions that have a high degree of uncertainty; thus, they may make the investigators to misinterpret such claims a factor that may mislead the investigation (Hayden, 2012). Moreover, such vagueness of expressions may lead to empirical difficulties to verify the effectiveness of the criminal profiles developed from such research work (Agarwal and Agarwal, 2008). Therefore, this essay aims at addressing the significance of effective and ineffective reporting of the qualitative criminal research findings. The article “The Evolutional View of the Types of Identity Thefts and Online Frauds in the Era of the Internet” by Shun-Yung Kevin Wang and Wilson Huang is pegged on their research work on Online Frauds (Wang and Huang, 2011). From the article, it is apparent that these researchers have highly concentrated the negative effects of the internet thereby they might have disregarded other vital information that might have been provided concerning their topic research. However, it is important to analyze presented information that is not relevant to the topic of concern. Analysis of such information is vital for such information usually provides hints to other factors that contribute or are likely to contribute to the advancement of such crime (Greasley, 2008). Wang and Huang’s article aimed at addressing Types of Identity Thefts and Online Frauds in the Era of the Internet, a topic that might have just concentrated on factors that fuels such crime, but it is apparent that the reported they provided also contains the advancement of this criminal act that may be considered as positively reported negative evidence. For instance, they reported, “With the continuous advancement of Internet technology and personal computing devices in recent years, Internet crimes have risen to an alarming level (Wang and Huang, 2011).” This form of information is quite important since if the activities related to that crime are increasing, it would be upon the law reinforces to revolve of measures to take towards curbing; otherwise, reducing the same factors or activities. On the other hand, Wang and Huang seemed to have failed to record what most respondents tend to give at the end of the interview or following the structures of certain questions. In their report, they should have mentioned the solutions offered by their correspondents suggested to reduce or eradicate the internet related criminal activities (Faherty, 2008). For instance, they noted, “the integration of such diverse technological applications coupled with the rapid growth of online users make fraudulent activities likely to rise further, if no intervention is proposed and implemented (Wang and Huang, 2011).” In this part of their report, they failed to list other integrated services and applications that when coupled with the use of the internet and its high number of users will increase the crime immensely. Lack of reporting some negative evidences collected from qualitative criminal research work is sometime vital since divergence and reporting some information that are related to the crime under investigation may broaden the investigation thereby hindering effective judgment (Indulska, Dirk, and Recker, 2012). Additionally, such evidences may broaden the investigation leading to other investigations that were not intended originally. Therefore, ignoring or failing to report the negative evidences in a research report leads to effective and comprehensive data collection. In additional, Wang and Huang’ managed to report negative evidence that might have been related to theft from the ATMs. They said, “… a user needs to present an ATM card (have something) and type in an access code (know something) (Wang and Huang, 2011). This combination offers a greater degree of protection to property because information that is more personal is required. For the same reason, however, an extremely secure system that uses a combination of multiple identifying principles and employs advanced technology of the time is of limited use because of high associated cost (Wang and Huang, 2011).” Those who were being interviewed did not provide this information, but it is information from these researchers (Starparu, 2011). They provided it as a solution to the ATM crimes in relation to “… type of identity thefts and online frauds in the era of the internet (Wang and Huang, 2011).” The same elements of qualitative research work in the criminology are clearly presented in the qualitative study- “The Contribution of Financial Investigation to Tackling Organized Crime conducted” by Rick Brown among other researchers (Brown, 2012). It should be noted that financial investigations are usually vital and it is one of the specialized investigation within the law enforcement. In the study, the survey or investigation was initiated to tackle organized crimes (Starparu, 2011). Moreover, it is notable that financial investigators often operate under the legal framework of the proceeds of the Crime Act 2002 (POCA). During this investigation, numerous assets were to be recovered (Faherty, 2008). In this investigation, it is apparent that the series of negative evidences have not been exposed rather they have only been used to develop the investigation to the conclusion. In is important to note the investigation involves money and organized criminals; therefore, it is in the interests of the participants that these researchers neglected some of the negative evidence. For instance, when the researchers note, “The public may, for instance, play an important role in alerting the police to the fact that a crime has taken place and in providing initial leads, but the prosecution case may ultimately depend on forensic evidence (Brown, 2012).” This statement strongly suggest that the public did provide the researcher with the required information, but not to peg liability of the involved or identified criminals, the researchers of this study have decided to remain discrete with the information provided to them (Starparu, 2011). Additionally, this investigation involves financial institutions that are defined by a high degree of secrecy; therefore, to protect the image of these financial institutions, these researchers are only compelled to provide relative and discrete information. In other words, some information must just be edited following numerous outliers that might have been generated by wrong understanding or but not providing structured interview that may result from poor research guidelines or miss communication between the researcher and the respondents (Kritzer, 2009). The research report indicates that the investigation changed in a direction following negative evidences that was provided by one of the clients. It says, “In two cases the use of financial investigations changed the direction of an investigation by revealing more serious forms of criminality; in one of these cases an investigation started with intelligence that a family was involved in drug trafficking. Financial investigations uncovered a much more complex case in which the family was alleged to be making money from a company not declaring the employee tax, national insurance or VAT generated by the business. In the second of these cases an investigation that started out as a tax credit fraud case ended up developing into a money laundering case (Brown, 2012).” The negative evidence has been used to indicate the degree seriousness and the nature of the information that the involved the respondents provided (Starparu, 2011). Negative evidences are significant in any qualitative or any other research methodology since they are perfect avenues to provide an alternative way of viewing the problem. Therefore, well execution and articulation these negative evidences are sure ways understanding the scope of the problem thereby helping in initiating necessary measures of reducing the same. However, criminal investigators or researcher should be extremely careful on how they use and treat such evidences since they may lead to misplaced research work. Moreover, the information when wrongly used may jeopardize the security of the persons providing such information thereby hindering future participation of such persons among set of people in criminal research works. References Agarwal, B. L., & Agarwal, S. P. (2008). Statistical analysis of quantitative genetics. New Delhi: New Age International. Faherty, V. E. (2008). Compassionate statistics: Applied quantitative analysis for social services (with instructions for SPSS). London: SAGE. Greasley, P. (2008). Quantitative data analysis using SPSS: An introduction for health and social science. Maidenhead: Open University Press. Hayden, A. (2012). The “Evaluation of the Lexington (Fayette County) Kentucky Juvenile Drug Court Program”. Internet Journal of Criminology. Retrieved Feb. 24, 2013 from http://www.internetjournalofcriminology.com/Hayden_Evaluation_of_Fayette_County_Kentucky_Juvenile_Drug_Court_Program_IJC_May_2012.pdf. Indulska, M., Dirk, S. H., & Recker, J. (2012). Quantitative approaches to content analysis: Identifying conceptual drift across publication outlets. European Journal of Information Systems, 21(1), 49-69. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/ejis.2011.37 Kritzer, H. M. (2009). The data puzzle: The nature of interpretation in quantitative research. American Journal of Political Science, 40(1), 1-1. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/196850439?accountid=45049 Starparu, L. (2011). Quantitative data analysis procedures at credit institutions. Economy Transdisciplinarity Cognition, 14(1), 359-365B. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/1118587326?accountid=45049 Wang, S. K. and Huang, W. (2011). The Evolutional View of the Types of Identity Thefts and Online Frauds in the Era of the Internet. Retrieved Feb. 24, 2013 from http://www.internetjournalofcriminology.com/Wang_Huang_The_Evolutional_View_of_the_Types_of_Identity_Thefts_and_Online_Frauds_in_the_Era_of_Internet_IJC_Oct_2011.pdf Brown, R. (2012). The Contribution of Financial Investigation to Tackling Organised Crime: A Qualitative Study. Retrieved March 04, 2013 from http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/publications/science-research-statistics/research-statistics/crime-research/horr65?view=Binary Read More