Advantages and Challenges of Queer Scholars Doing Qualitative Queer Criminology and Criminal Justice Research

Queer Theory and Criminology

Queer theory, a branch of critical theory, began to develop in the early 1990s. Since that time, there has been movement to incorporate queer theory into a variety of fields of study, including criminology. However, it can be argued that criminologists have been slower to warm up to these ideas than those in other fields, such as gender studies and sociology. While criminology has historically dealt with issues of sexuality and gender diversity, this has mainly been from a deviance model trying to understand how queer people could be “cured or controlled” (Dwyer et al., 2016, p. 1; Woods, 2014). As Buist and Semprevivo (2022) explain, “Criminology as a discipline has traditionally been focused on mainstream explanations of crime by mainstream researchers who contribute to maintaining the status quo. In general, this means there is a preponderance of research conducted by white cisgender males on white cisgender males” (p. 1). Or as Winters (2022) puts it, “The legacy of criminology paints the views of cisgender heterosexual white men in broad strokes as the de facto perspective” (p. 32).

In the Handbook of LGBT Communities, Crime, and Justice, Woods (2014) outlines three key oversights of criminological literature:

To address these pitfalls, queer criminology directly contrasts mainstream (i.e., largely quantitative) criminological literature by putting queer individuals and communities at the center of inquiry.

As Dwyer et al. (2016) point out in the introduction to Queering Criminology, despite some shifts in the field of criminology, mainstream criminology remains heteronormative. Mainstream criminology fails to recognize the diversity of gender and sexuality as it continues to rely on a binary (male/female, man/woman, and straight/gay) view of these identities. Mainstream criminology continues the marginalization of queer people and often even uses derogatory, inappropriate, and outdated language and theories. Overall, many criminologists continue to feel “considerable discomfort around where queer fits in criminologies” (Dwyer et al., 2016, p. 2).

Queer criminology “seeks to highlight and draw attention to the stigmatization, the criminalization, and. . .the rejection of the queer community” (Buist & Lenning, 2016, p. 1). Queering criminology “is about disrupting, challenging, and asking uncomfortable questions that produce new ways of thinking in relation to the lives of LGBTIA people and criminal justice processes” (Dwyer et al., 2016, p. 3). Despite some growing acceptance of queer theory in criminology, Buist and Semprevivo (2022, p. 2), maintain:

There is a lack of ‘real-world’ application of queer criminology, and this in turn continually reminds us that when there is lack of recognition, regard, respect, and inclusion in research and professional fields in the criminal legal system, it makes it much easier for our larger social systems to ignore LGBTQ+ populations.

The study of queer people and the expansion of “queer criminology is a necessary addition to the field; not only for the sake of knowledge, but also for the lives of those in the LGBTQ community impacted by injustice in the criminal justice system” (Buist & Stone, 2014, p. 37).

Therefore, along with Dwyer et al. (2016), we:

Hold criminology to account for its failures in this regard and offer new ways of thinking and speaking about LGBTIQ experiences within criminological frameworks, bending and stretching these frameworks in order to make queer criminologies thinkable, possible, and productive of better futures. (p. 4)

Queer criminology allows for a focus on the discrimination and criminalization of LGBTQ people, highlighting the blurred boundary between victimization and offending (Buist & Lenning, 2016; S. A. Rogers & Rogers, 2020; Tyler & Johnson, 2004; Winters, 2022). This is essential given criminologies historical depiction of queer people in ways that reinforced prejudicial and stereotypical views of victimization and offending. By omitting the LGBTQ community from analysis, criminological research does not allow for a deep understanding required to address discrimination of LGBTQ people in the criminal justice system (Peterson & Panfil, 2014). Due to the oversights of queer people in criminological research, the field of criminology has perpetuated the oppression of LGBTQ people (Woods, 2014). Further, queering criminology allows scholars to question entire systems as we know them, especially the problematic, heteronormative, cisnormative, racist, etc. criminal justice system.

Queer and Qualitative Methods

Since the conception of queer theory in the early 1990s, there has been heated debate about how to put the theory in practice, specifically: (1) What are queer methodologies? and (2) Can queer methodologies ever be compatible with the social sciences? (Ghaziani & Brim, 2019). According to Ghaziani and Brim (2019), social scientists argue that research should “emphasize the systematic, coherent, orderly, modal, normative, positivist, and generalizable while queer theorists in the humanities champion the fluid, flux, disruptive, transgressive, interpretivist, and local knowledges. Hence, conjoining “queer” with “method” can present a paradox” (p. 4). This seeming paradox, however, is not real. It is a holdover from social scientists who held power within their disciplines trying to “mimic the ‘real’ or ‘natural’ sciences by using words like ‘theory,’ ‘experiments,’ and ‘laws’” (Ghaziani & Brim, 2019, p. 5).

While women, people of color, and queer people have always done research that operates outside the bonds of the hegemonic devotion to the “scientific method” (see work by W. E. B. Du Bois, Dorothy Smith, Jane Addams, Ida B. Wells), until recently, “the hegemony of this model has stymied social scientific efforts to build queer methods” (Ghaziani & Brim, 2019, p. 5). Or, we would argue, the hegemony of the model and the power of those who promoted it (namely white, cisgender men) rendered much of the queer and qualitative work of the past invisible. In line with Tewksbury et al. (2005, p. 278), we agree that “criminology and criminal justice needs to engage plurality in scientific inquiry. . . [and] the social sciences have been hampered by efforts to emulate the physical sciences, instead of evolving into a field that incorporates, not ranks, methodological approaches.”

Criminologists’ acceptance (or more accurately lack of acceptance) of queer methodologies closely mimics that of sociologists, which makes sense as the discipline of criminology developed out of sociology. As Schilt et al. (2018, p. 4) explain in Other, Please Specify: Queer Methods in Sociology, sociology is:

A disciplinary context caught in a (very long) moment of quantitative hegemony, U.S. sociology has a tendency to push to the margins any work that problematizes (or, we might say, queers) the field by bringing to the forefront the experiences of people and groups consider too “indecent,” too “fringe,” or too “micro” to warrant attention from the established sociological center.

Further, social scientists continually face “positivist gatekeepers who evaluate the significance of research in terms of p-values and generalists who prioritize broad ‘so what’ claims” (Schilt et al., 2018, p. 5).

Although mainstream criminology sometimes includes the queer community in samples, gender identities are not incorporated and questioned as salient characteristics (Peterson & Panfil, 2014). That is, queer people have only been incorporated into criminology as objects of fascination and populations of study, not as subjects in our research or in ways that take their lived experiences seriously (Schilt & Lagos, 2017). One main tenet of queer criminology is to allow the voices of oppressed people to be heard and believed. To do so involves qualitative analysis through interviewing, listening, collaborating with organizations outside of academia, and providing the information and stories gathered to the public (Lombardi, 2018; Schilt & Lagos, 2017; Sumerau & Mathers, 2019). The dissemination of the collective voices of oppressed and marginalized people will allow for the inclusion of these populations in criminal justice policy and violence prevention.

While queer methods are not always qualitative, and qualitative work is surely not always queer, qualitative methods make way for queer theory and methods in ways that quantitative research focused on the “scientific method” within the social sciences has failed to do historically. For instance, specific to the history of social science research on sexualities, Gamson (2000) explains:

It is a history intertwined with the politics of social movements, wary of the ways “science” has been used against the marginalized, and particularly comfortable with the strategies of qualitative research—which at least appear to be less objectifying of their subjects, to be more concerned with cultural and political meaning creation, and to make more room for voices and experiences that have been suppressed. (p. 347)

Due to the political context of gender and sexualities, and the suspicion of positivist sciences, qualitative research has gained the “inside track” when studying queer people (Gamson, 2000, p. 348). Although qualitative methods may have a hold on studies of diverse genders and sexualities, the discipline of criminology at large still does not value this work in earnest. Just as quantitative methods continue to hold dominance in U.S. sociology (Schilt et al., 2018), so too do quantitative methods reign in criminology.

Here we use Gamson’s (2000) definition of qualitative research as:

A loose set of research practices (ethnography and participant observation, in-depth interviewing, textual analysis, historical research, and the like) distinct from quantitative methods and often suspicious of the epistemological assumptions of positivism, and a correspondingly loose but distinct set of research foci (cultural meaning creation and interpretive processes, collective and personal identities, social interaction, the practices of everyday life, and so on). (p. 348)

Tewksbury (2009) argues:

The superiority of qualitative research arises from the core differences in what qualitative and quantitative research are, and what they are able to contribute to bodies of knowledge. At the core, qualitative research focuses on the meanings, traits and defining characteristics of events, people, interactions, settings/cultures, and experience. (pp. 38, 39)

We believe that meaning and context always matter, especially within the criminal justice system, therefore, the lack of qualitative research within criminology is unreasonable.

This is not to say, however, that other queer criminological research methods such as quantitative (see Worthen, 2022 for a good example) and mixed methods (see DeJong et al., 2021 for a good example) aren’t needed. As Worthen (2022) says in her work on the victimization of bisexual and pansexual women:

quantitative findings point to the need for additional work to understand more fully pansexual and bisexual women’s violence and harassment using a more fully developed intersectional framework (Collins, 1999; Crenshaw, 1991; Davis, 2008). Indeed, the quantification of such experiences is only one piece of the puzzle, and while quantitative analyses help to contribute to an important conversation about pansexual and bisexual women’s experiences, more research is needed that is inclusive of other types of methodological investigations and critically informed conversations.

Therefore, quantitative and qualitative scholars can benefit from each other’s work to make the field of Queer Criminology more well-rounded and more widely utilized by scholars in other fields within the disciplines of CCJ and sociology.

The benefits of qualitative research are numerous. Qualitative research provides the ability to make meaning out of stories, interactions, and observations that would go undiscovered in quantitative analysis. The data that emerges from qualitative methods are rich and robust; often, many more discoveries lie in its depth. These found meanings and expansions on presupposed questions and ideas lead to new findings in the field. Qualitative research, especially when involving queer methods, also amplifies the voices of marginalized people. One critical challenge to influencing public policy is the lack of visibility of queer and trans issues in the criminal justice system. However, “those who have experienced discrimination speak with a special voice to which we should listen” (Matsuda, 1987, p. 324).

As Copes et al. (2016) explain, “The vast majority of classic and contemporary criminological theories have been developed or shaped by insights gained from qualitative methods. Despite this, research using such methods has seemingly been relegated to the margins in the disciplines’ journals” (p.137). Queer qualitative scholars within criminology continue to be ostracized and face obstacles publishing their research within the field (Dwyer et al., 2016). Because qualitative work and queer work is not highlighted in CCJ research, more justification for this work is required for publication. For instance, Pogrebin (2010) explains, “Qualitative researchers are often not provided with the opportunity to justify their methods. Instead, we have been forced to defend our work” (p. 541). Qualitative work often has implications and benefits for oppressed populations, yet it gets little attention because not many journals publish it. Without cited work, it is harder to get grants and funding to support your research. When we add that our topic is queer, the likelihood of funding all but vanishes.

Lack of Focus on Qualitative and Queer Methodologies in Criminology and Criminal Justice

The continued ramping up of credentialism in U.S. society, along with the changing status of academia, means that scholars must do more-and-more to stand out among their colleagues. This has led to a reliance on quantifying the number of publications scholars produce for admittance into graduate school, hiring of jobs, and tenure and promotion decisions. It is quicker to publish quantitative research, but this does not make it better research. As Pogrebin (2010, p. 588) argues, we must move toward a discipline in which “an academic’s research findings should be judged on the quality of the work produced and not only on the quantity of articles resulting in publication.”

Considering qualitative articles published in the 15 leading criminology and criminal justice journals in the United States between 2000 and 2009, Copes et al. (2011) found that less than 5% of the published articles used qualitative methodology. In 2008, Buckler found that out of 860 empirical articles, only 10% reported any data in qualitative form, versus 96.2% of the articles reporting some data in quantitative form. In the most recent examination of this trend, Copes et al. (2020) explore the use of qualitative research in the top 17 criminology and criminal justice journals between 2010 and 2019. They find that 11.3% of the articles used qualitative methodologies. Furthermore, in the top 5 journals only 5.3% of the articles were qualitative in nature, compared to 12.8% among the other 12 journals in the study.

While the number of qualitative articles seems higher in more recent years, Copes et al. (2020) explain, “Whether this is the start of a new trend, or a statistical anomaly is unclear. . . Hence, while the evidence supports the growth and increasing popularity of qualitative methods, it appears that the journals that are the most selective (at least in the United States) are those least likely to publish qualitative based analyses” (p. 1076). The extent of this disparity between published quantitative and qualitative work in CCJ journals is also not as pronounced internationally. A review of the three leading international criminology and criminal justice journals reveal that 27.7% of the published work used qualitative methodologies (Tewksbury et al., 2010). Of the articles published in the British Journal of Criminology, almost 38% were qualitative work.

In addition to the problem publishing qualitative academic journal articles, there are also the concerns of qualitative research being more likely to be published in books and edited volumes (Copes et al., 2016) and the issue of receiving funding for conducting this work in the first place. Copes et al. (2016) explain that publishing in peer-reviewed journals is important in order “to show the relevance and importance of qualitative methods for the general criminological audience” (p. 122). Because most criminologists are not reading the books published by qualitative scholars or edited volumes, especially in queer criminology, “publishing in mainstream channels can make the qualitative tradition more visible” (p.122). Furthermore, Wright et al. (2015) explain the lack of funding for qualitative projects “has served to entrench its disciplinary dominance” of quantitative methods. Funding agencies are increasingly concerned with accountability of spending, hard data, and vast publication of data, which often makes it easier for quantitative scholars to have their research funded (Wright et al., 2015).

The lack of presence of queer criminological work is brought to light at academic conferences as well. For example, preliminary data by the first author shows that less than 2% of all presentations, workshops, and plenaries from the American Society of Criminology’s (ASC) Annual Conference in 2019 included work about the queer community. The theme of ASC in 2019 was, “Confronting Injustice and Inequalities,” yet of the 4,417 entries in the program, only 59 (1.34%) were queer-centered.

The dominance of quantitative methods is also clearly seen in what we teach our students. The lack of qualitative research in the fields of CCJ should come as no surprise when we review what graduate education programs are teaching. For example, Buckler (2008) argues, “A potential contributing factor to the miniscule use of qualitative methodologies compared with quantitative methodologies in published research is that Ph.D. programs do not emphasis qualitative methods as a valuable and viable approach to generating knowledge” (p. 387). Hence, the disciplines neglect of qualitative methodologies replicates a cycle of distrust for qualitative methods, which are not made legible for many new graduate students, especially first-generation students, and students from disenfranchised background, as well as marginalized scholars more generally.

As of Spring semester 2022, there are only nine known CCJ graduate programs in the U.S. with a focus on Queer Criminology (DQC, n.d.). “The following graduate programs offer degrees in criminology and criminal justice and opportunities to work with scholars who study Queer Criminology and support the work of LGBTQ+ scholars”: Arizona State University, East Carolina University, Michigan State University, Northern Arizona University, Old Dominion University, Sam Houston State University, University of Arkansas (Little Rock), University of Oklahoma, and Florida International University. Perhaps this is not an exhaustive list, but no other schools in the U.S. are named by the Division of Queer Criminology (a division of members through ASC—American Society of Criminology) on their website.

Of the 25 CCJ doctoral-granting universities analyzed, only 5.5% of the required methods courses focused specifically and exclusively on qualitative methodologies, compared to 35.5% of courses focusing exclusively on quantitative methods. When looking at the elective methods courses, only 15.8% focused on qualitative methods, compared to 54.6% on quantitative methods. In total, only 4 of the 25 programs required that students take a qualitative methods course. And, in 11 of the programs, there were no qualitative methods courses offered at all (Buckler, 2008). The lack of available training and research available using qualitative methodologies meant that between 2004 and 2008 only 12.3% of criminology and criminal justice students who successfully defended doctoral dissertations utilized qualitative analysis (Tewksbury et al., 2010).

As we have seen some relative improvement in the number of published qualitative articles in the field, we have also seen some improvement in offerings of qualitative methodology courses in criminology and criminal justice doctoral-granting institutions. Nevertheless, for qualitative methodologies to gain acceptance in the discipline, doctoral-granting programs “must become more inclusive in their methodological orientation” (Buckler, 2008). It is important to remember that this is a circular problem though, which must be addressed from multiple points to create a solution. By this we mean, for graduate programs to be more inclusive, there must be more inclusive published qualitative and queer criminology and criminal justice research.

Doing Qualitative Queer Criminology

As the editorial board of Crime & Delinquency has acknowledged, qualitative researchers encounter obstacles related to publishing, acceptability, research self-disclosure, rapport development, feelings of guilt or vulnerability, and opportunity that quantitative scholars often do not. Here we discuss our experiences with these obstacles related to one queer qualitative criminological study in hopes that it will provide knowledge to the next generation of queer qualitative scholars. We hope to fill a gap in the published work in the field by providing a case study that can be used to train the next generation of scholars. Taking an autoethnographic approach, this article discusses a study about the pathways to incarceration and the challenges with the criminal justice system faced by trans men.

Conclusion

“Qualitative research is often ‘journeying without a map’ (Rooke, 2010, p. 47); while this can be scary and overwhelming at times, it is also how we find new roads and new ideas” (B. A. Rogers, 2021, p. 35). Our goal with this article is to show the importance of queer qualitative research, but also acknowledge it’s challenges. As McQueeney and Lavelle (2017) discuss, we fail to help new qualitative scholars to succeed if we do not discuss the challenges of this work. Without discussing hardships in engaging in qualitative work, we leave new scholars feeling alone, which contributes further to the lack of qualitative and queer research in the field.

Our hope is for more criminologists and criminal justice researchers to take on the challenges and excitement of qualitative queer research, while also understanding it in a way that allows you to adequately prepare for the costs—monetarily and emotionally—this research requires. We hope this article will be part of the change that can occur within the field and that it will encourage other scholars to submit their queer qualitative work to criminological and criminal justice journals. We hope that Crime & Delinquency will lead the way in addressing the lack of qualitative work in the field and provide a new and improved outlet for qualitative scholars, especially queer ones, with their boots on the ground.