What we do

The Crime and Justice Research Group (CJRG) is dedicated to the exploration and critical analysis of the social phenomena of crime and deviance, and considers both the formal and informal reactions to these phenomena.

Researchers in the CJRG are drawn from a range of disciplines including criminology, law, psychology, sociology and social science. This diversity allows us to foster a genuinely interdisciplinary research group focusing on the following research priorities and challenges:

Punishment processes, practices and cultures

Understanding punishment as a cultural practice represents an overarching research theme informing the work of the CSRG. Exploring how different parties contribute to and experience decision-making processes and practices involved in contemporary punishment forms an important element of this larger theme. Research topics within this thematic area include sentencing; penal decision-making; mass supervision; Drug Court and problem-solving justice; and legitimacy and procedural justice.

Desistance, resettlement and prison studies

Exploring prisoners’ experiences of punishment, particularly how they make sense of prison and their journeys towards desistance and resettlement after prison represents an important research theme. Related topics include prison education, the sociology of the prison, prison-based social capital, legitimacy of prisons from prisoners’ perspectives and legal rights of and awareness among prisoners.

Victimology and victimisation

Victimology and the study of victimisation represent a second overarching theme around which a number of CSRG members are clustered. Two key research strands currently exist: The study of victim trauma from a social psychology and social activist perspective particularly understanding and capturing the narratives and the experiences of victims of institutional abuse; and the national study of agricultural crime victimisation. The national agricultural crime victimization study examined the incidence, financial cost and the amount of crime not reported to Gardaí and why it was not reported.

Security, online terrorism and radicalisation

Understanding behaviour and phenomenon related to terrorism, extremism, crime, and criminality. Current research focuses on understanding terrorist use of the internet, in particular the content and function of discourses supportive of terrorism and the potential of alternative discourses in counter-terrorism efforts. Related themes include changes to extreme ideology through a temporal analysis and investigating online discourses of women in right-wing extremist groups

Alcohol, policing and public order

Alcohol use and misuse represents an important social challenge in contemporary Irish society. Research within the CSRG currently explores the intersections between alcohol and society in contemporary settings in two key areas: the link between alcohol and public order problems in the night-time economy and the role that formal and informal policing plays in regulating alcohol related public order offences in the nighttime economy.