This section of the paper will deal with the methodological choices made during the research of the project as well as the consequences they’ve had for the project. Initially it will explain the thoughts that lead to the initiation of this project, then it will move on to explain difficulties we faced and the choices we had to make and finally it will explain how these choices in the end finalized the project reasonably close to the initial idea of how the project was to be done.
First Thoughts:
Naturally there was some confusion at the beginning of this project both towards who in the end would be part of the work and as well towards the closer aspects of the project. Our initial idea was to work very closely with felons in order to create our own data through skype interviews as well as a questionnaire we had worked out to directly question felons as to their lives before, during and after their time served for their felonies. We specifically aimed towards gathering personal data on our focus group - which we had already established to be felons however after looking closer into statistics regarding the amount of African Americans incarcerated compared to their total percentage of the population - 13,2% of the total population, while according to a BJS as of 2009 made up a total of 39.4% of the total prison and jail population - we made the hypothesis that it wouldn’t be too far-
42/74 fetched to assume these laws may have some racial bias. These statistics, along with some presented later in this paper, led us to the hypothesis along the line of Michelle Alexander’s, that there is a racial bias towards black people within the justice system of the United States. For the time being we decided to remain with a focus on felons and the strain they feel and then - if possible - seek to prove a racial bias.
Difficulties
:
After our initial work we set up to work out a coding system for our questionnaire that we could use to measure an amount of strain that felons would potentially feel while under pressure from laws referred to as the “Jim Crow Laws”. We set about to closer establish where to conduct more narrow research in terms of limiting our target group and attempt to gain some closer looks into the lives of felons under the harshest variation of restrictive laws. Sources we accessed at the time showed Florida to be an optimal example to investigate it was where could find the harshest measures of these restrictive laws to be in effect. With this knowledge we set forth to find different means of contacting a wide array of felons in order for us to best get as representative results as possible. While it seemed like we had a solid path for our work and were well set in terms of the data we were going to collect and analyse we hit speed bumps. After we had been contacted by the Florida State Penitentiary we found that it might be more relevant for us to work with those felons who were out on probation or those who had served their probation time and were as such more directly targeted by restrictive laws, but even as we attempted to gather data from NGOs working with said people our work stopped. Miscalculations towards how much time these organizations required to aid us in conducting such research meant that we had to seek out alternate data to aid our project along as it would seem we wouldn’t be getting any of our own generated data on time to finish it up.
Finalization:
As we came to terms with how our research would not be conducted as we had first hoped it would we started looking for alternate data in attempt to highlight the same subjects we had wanted to highlight with personal qualitative data as well as - what we had initially hoped would be a minor
43/74 factor - quantitative data along with it. This proved to be too difficult within the timeframe we had to work with, so instead we chose to take a closer look upon the actual restrictions, the conditions they could implement on a person as well the original Jim Crow laws for a comparative study.
Method
This section of the paper will deal with the methods that were used during the undertaking of this project. To begin with it will explain the initial idea for how research would be conducted before moving on to how these ideas came to an abrupt halt. Finally it will center in on what new tools were found and used in an attempt to restore the project to its glory.
First Thoughts:
While we all knew somewhat where we wanted to go with this project almost straight off the platform it would soon occur to us that it was something we would have to be careful while working with. We understood that we’d have to have some criminological theory attached to the project as we were very clearly engaging with a study of the behaviour and decision-making of people with a criminal record. During a workshop within the SIB house a supervisor helped us by pushing us towards General Strain Theory by Robert Agnew. With this in mind we sought to work more closely with the reasoning behind actions. As GST explained to us strain should be greatly considered when deciphering a person’s actions and as such we had a way to describe an effect of restrictive measurements however we still lacked theory to explain causal mechanisms and effects that were not directly tied in with legal measures but rather came from more community-based circles. First we came upon Labeling Theory, a theory by many theorists of whom the first was - arguably at least - Emilé Durkheim. Others would say Frank Tannenbaum is the ‘grandfather’ of the theory however we chose not to argue for one or the other but include arguments from both of them within our theoretical framework.
44/74 It was from Labeling Theory that we discovered Erving Goffman, the founder of Stigma Theory, a theory we had originally intended to play an opponent role towards labeling as the two had variating foci; where labeling focuses on institutional measures stigma focuses on societal responses more so.
Difficulties:
Working with the stance from General Strain Theory, in regards to causal mechanisms that would influence actions of a felon, aided by the differing views of labeling theory and stigma theory we created a questionnaire with which we intended to measure the amount of strain that any given person legally labeled a felon would experience. In an attempt to be as representative as possible we sought to differentiate between types of felons - violent charges, sexual offenses, drug charges or otherwise - in an attempt to see if there would be a pattern that a certain type of felon had a harder time reintegrating into the society they were meant to be rehabilitated for.
As it would be we had worked out a coding scale for qualitative data as well as follow-up questions for quantitative measurement of personal feelings towards the strain being put on these people. While we worked out this it, as explained above, did not work out to our benefit and we were forced to seek new ways to highlight the issue that we wanted to present evidence towards.
Finalization:
While our work pattern as well as our dataset would have to be changed almost entirely we did not go to great compromises with our theoretical data. We made a minor alteration to how we were going to use stigma theory as we could no longer use this to measure qualitative data presented by felons through the questionnaire we decided to work more closely with labeling theory and then take a basis in frequency of websites and search databases with access to felony records of people in the United States. We quickly found various sites that offered an amount of services to make sure one could always be aware of how close they were to someone with a felony record. With this new approach into stigma theory we also looked into institutional means to removing privileges of the
45/74 private lives of felons such as the ability to choose to get married and who to live with. With a lack of qualitative datasets it was clear to us that we had to work almost entirely, if not fully so, from statistical analyses and data.