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29 J. Res. Crime & Delinquency 3 (1992)

handle is hein.journals/jrcd29 and id is 1 raw text is: EXPERIMENTATION IN CRIMINAL JUSTICE: EDITORS' INTRODUCTION DAVID WEISBURD JOEL GARNER Random assignment of treatments to subjects is the defining feature of experimental research. It provides a statistical basis for making the assump- tion that the outcomes observed by researchers result from the interventions that they study. In contrast, correlational or quasi-experimental designs are always plagued by the possibility that some important confounding factor has not been taken into account by investigators (Farrington 1983; Brody 1978). Experiments, accordingly, have a distinct advantage over nonexperi- mental studies. They allow researchers to make an unambiguous link be- tween causes and their effects (Campbell and Stanley 1966; Sechrest and Rosenblatt 1987). Whatever the benefits of experimental research, experiments have until recently remained on the sidelines in the development of empirical criminol- ogy. R. A. Fisher pioneered random assignment and basic experimental procedures for field experiments in the 1920s (see Fisher 1923). The first randomized experiments in criminology were begun in the 1950s (e.g., see Reimer and Warren 1957; Berntsen and Christiansen 1965). Although recent reviews suggest that the use of experimental methods through the 1950s and 1960s was much more common than had once been assumed (see Farrington 1983; Dennis 1988; Weisburd, Sherman, and Petrosino 1990), such efforts are noteworthy more for their rarity than for their contributions to debate about major theoretical concerns in criminology. The reasons for the dearth of important experimental studies had much to do with questions of feasibility and research ethics. It was not clear that criminologists could overcome the technical and bureaucratic problems of randomly assigning subjects in the real world of crime and criminal justice. Irrespective of technical constraints, criminologists were generally hesitant when confronted with the task of allocating punishment based on their interventions in the justice system. It was one thing to observe the operations JOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN CRIME AND DELINQUENCY, Vol. 29 No. 1, Febmary 1992 3-6 @ 1992 Sage Publications, Inc. 3 from the SAGE Social Science Collections. All Rights Reserved.

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