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15 J. Res. Crime & Delinquency 1 (1978)

handle is hein.journals/jrcd15 and id is 1 raw text is: Editor's Comments In the last decade there has been a developing emphasis on research directed toward immediate problem solving, as distinct from disciplinary-based research with its stress on theory building. Most commonly referred to as policy research, such efforts are directed toward existing difficulties in the real world. They may be addressed through the perspective of a single discipline but more frequently involve several disciplines. Whatever the approach, the re- search ultimately is linked to a decision that must be made. This issue of the Journal of Research contains a series of articles which ex- emplify three lines of policy-related criminological research. All are concerned with decisions to be made about the control of crime or management of offenders. These studies are not so much concerned with understanding the eti- ology of crime as with direct measures to deal with it. The lead article is authored by a respected figure in American social psy- chology, Theodore Newcomb, and describes part of an extensive research pro- ject in the juvenile justice system. It addresses the problem of the management and behavioral control of those who are incarcerated in juvenile institutions. While this is a familiar line of inquiry, what makes this article especially im- portant is its scope and breadth. Continuing a practice begun in our last issue, Newcomb's article was submitted to two authorities for their comment. Carl Jesness, reflecting on the general value of this kind of research, discusses the conditions under which such research is valuable to decisionmakers. Maynard Erickson raises some fundamental questions about the conclusions to which this type of research often leads. He questions whether some of those conclu- sions are appropriate. Another segment of this issue is devoted to four articles that arise from a familiar perspective in contemporary criminological research, namely, system performance. This idea traces its modern lineage to the American Bar Associ- ation's studies in the 1960s and the President's Crime Commission on Law En- forcement and the Administration of Justice. It is an approach undergirded as well by a pervasive intellectual attraction in the social sciences and the policy arts to systems analysis. Both of these influences place considerable emphasis on key decision points in the criminal justice network as the focus of analysis. The articles presented in this segment look at three decision points in the criminal justice system and raise significant issues about the character of those decisions. Richard Lundman, Richard Sykes, and John Clark, in the tradition of Black and Reiss, attempt to scale the relative strength of various influences on the official response to deviant behavior, most specifically the decision to arrest. John Hepburn seeks to determine the relationship between race and the decision to arrest, and Carl Pope examines the social and legal factors associated with the decision to release or retain burglar arrestees prior to trial. Marvin Bohnstedt pursues an evaluation strategy which has important impli- JOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN CRIME AND DELINQUENCY, January 1978 1

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