At the November 2019 meeting of the American Society of Criminology, it was my pleasure to work with Dr. Julie Yingling and graduate student Danielle Haverkate to deliver a brief workshop on community-based participatory research (CBPR). This workshop was sponsored by the Division on Women and Crime (DWC). In proposing the workshop, we argued that CBPR traditions were highly compatible with the traditions of feminist criminology as well as with more general calls for publicly-engaged criminology and “translational” research1, 2.
Community-based participatory research (CBPR) strategies offer an opportunity for researchers to partner with communities to do public, translational work that has direct impact. These strategies begin with identifying a research topic that is important to a community and then providing researcher collaboration and assistance to build the community’s capacity to advocate for changes to policy and practice to better meet community member needs. CBPR is increasingly popular (as demonstrated through multiple books and special issues of journals) and has been shown to be effective in making change 3, 4, 5. Still, as CBPR has increased in popularity and support within health disciplines, it has been slower to catch on in criminology and criminal justice. Reasons may include a relative lack of familiarity with the approach among those in our discipline, difficulties adapting CBPR techniques for criminal justice research, or perhaps barriers to getting CBPR project results published in traditional academic outlets.
Below, I am sharing the workshop materials with hope that you might find them useful, either in inspiring you to consider CBPR methods for your next project or for supporting your ongoing work.
An Incomplete List of CBPR Resources and Examples for criminologists and criminal justice scholars
CBPR Workshop PowerPoint slides
Example Research Partnership Checklist (source)
- https://www.asc41.com/Criminologist/2018/ASC-Criminologist-2018-11.pdf
- https://www.nij.gov/about/director/Pages/laub-translational-criminology-3-1-2011.aspx
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4685976/
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26994713
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5554943/