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Negotiating a Way In: A Special Collection of Essays on Accessing Information and Socio-legal Research

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2013

Michael S. Mopas  and
Sarah Turnbull
Michael S. Mopas
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology & Anthropology, Carleton University, 1125 Colonel By Drive Ottawa, ON K1S 5B6, Canada, [email protected]
Sarah Turnbull
Affiliation:
Centre of Criminology and Sociolegal Studies, University of Toronto, 14 Queen's Park Crescent West Toronto, ON M5S 3K1, Canada, [email protected]
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Extract

For most scholars, what we choose to research is largely determined by personal interest and a desire to produce new knowledge that will meaningfully contribute to the advancement of our chosen field of study. For those of us who do work in the areas of criminology and socio-legal studies, this pursuit of knowledge often requires that we gain access to public officials, state institutions, or government documents to collect necessary data. Regardless of whether we engage in quantitative or qualitative research, the findings we produce are highly dependent upon the information we are able to gather. Access therefore emerges as a key topic for researchers, raising important methodological concerns as well as broader political questions regarding the availability of information in liberal democracies.

However, although gaining access to data is a crucial step in the research process, it is one that seems to garner little scholarly attention within criminological and socio-legal circles. Indeed, although there are a countless number of textbooks on the market (many of which are used every year as required reading in undergraduate and graduate research methods classes) that discuss the various ways researchers can go about collecting and analysing data, very little is said about the processes involved in negotiating entry with the gate-keepers of these data. Much of what is discussed in most methods text-books and classrooms is often limited to questions of ethics and the moral duties and obligations of researchers to their participants, rather than critical considerations related to the actual practice of gaining access.

Type
Problems in Accessing Information: A Collection of Essays
Information
Canadian Journal of Law and Society / La Revue Canadienne Droit et Société , Volume 26 , Issue 3 , December 2011 , pp. 585 - 590
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Law and Society Association 2011

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References

1 For a good example of a criminological research methods textbook that does discuss this issue of negotiating access in detail see Noaks, L. and Wincup, E., Criminological Research: Understanding Qualitative Methods (London: Sage, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Both authors are “guilty” of such naïvety in the course of conducting their own doctoral research projects, with the idea for this special collection emerging from discussions around the research process and access issues.

3 For a discussion on the various options available to researchers who are denied access see Blaxter, L., Hughes, C., and Tight, M., How to Research (Buckingham, UK: Open University Press, 1996)Google Scholar.

4 Hannah-Moffat, K., “Criminological Cliques: Narrowing Dialogues, Institutional Protectionism, and the Next Generation,” in What Is Criminology?, ed. Bosworth, M. and Hoyle, C. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011)Google Scholar.

5 Noaks and Wincup, Criminological Research, c. 4. See also Blaxter et al., How to Research; King, R., “Doing Research in Prison,” in Doing Research on Crime and Justice, ed. King, R. and Wincup, E. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000)Google Scholar; Hammersley, M. and Atkinson, P., Ethnography: Principles in Practice (London: Routledge, 1995)Google Scholar.

6 See Hannah-Moffat, “Criminological Cliques”; Larsen, M. and Walby, K., eds., Brokering Access: Power, Politics and Freedom of Information Process in Canada (Vancouver: UBC Press, forthcoming)Google Scholar; Huey, L., “Subverting Surveillance Systems: Access to Information Mechanisms as Tools of Counter-Surveillance,” in Surveillance: Power, Problems and Politics, ed. Hier, S. and Greenberg, J. (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2009)Google Scholar; Yeager, M., “Getting the Usual Treatment: Censorship and the Marginalization of Convict Criminology,” Contemporary Justice Review 11, 4 (2008): 413–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Yeager, M., “The Freedom of Information Act as a Methodological Tool: Suing the Government for Data,” Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice 48, 4 (2006): 499–521CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Martel, J., “Policing Criminological Knowledge: The Hazards of Qualitative Research on Women in Prison,” Theoretical Criminology 8, 2 (2004): 157–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar.