In this seminar, speakers will discuss how administrative data can be utilised to carry out criminological research. Examples of data sources and work currently being carried out in this area will be provided to demonstrate how administrative data can aid our understanding of policing and criminal justice.
How criminology could benefit from more use of administrative data
Professor Nick Tilley OBE FACss – Department of Security and Crime Science, University College London
Criminology currently makes rather modest use of administrative data. There are opportunities to make greater and better use of a wide range of sources, notwithstanding their limitations. Some limitations in administrative data could be reduced if researchers played a larger part in designing collection and recording systems, which would make the data of greater use operationally as well as for research purposes. Examples will be given of uses that have been made and which could be made of administrative data in criminological research in the future.
From Data to Decision: On the Uses and Abuses of Administrative Data in Understanding Police Action and Behaviour
Professor Martin Innes – School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University and Director of the Universities’ Police Science Institute
Informed by empirical analysis and insights derived from several applied policing projects, this paper will explore how administrative data can be employed in seeking to understand the work of the police. The discussion will pivot around three principal claims:
How aggregating administrative data to look for patterns in behavior and organizational action, can provide particular value by augmenting the police tendency to focus their attention upon defined cases and incidents
Why it is important for researchers using administrative datasets to understand how codes are framed and used by practitioners, for without this, misleading inferences and interpretations can be drawn
What the implications are for the uses of administrative data of operating in an information environment, suffused with a variety of different sources of public data including those generated via social media, that some have cast as a ‘post-factual’ society.
Who should attend:
Social scientists, statisticians, PhD students and anyone interested in social research in general.
Registration opens at 13:45 for a 14:00 start.
Click here for more information and click here to book your place.