Ethical Dilemmas in International Criminological Research

Michael Adorjan is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Calgary, Canada, and Fellow with the Centre for Criminology, University of Hong Kong. Rosemary Ricciardelli is Professor in Sociology at Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada.

1 Introduction: ethical event horizons in criminological research; 2 Research ethics, researchers’ responsibilities, and the ethical dilemmas in research with young people about their socio-political participation; 3 Gaining little things and losing big things: the ethics of using deception to gain institutional access; 4 Befriending police officers: reflecting on the ethics of my deceptive buddy researcher tactics; 5 Practitioner–researchers, ethical reflexivity, and the need to negotiate ethics on multiple institutional levels; 6 Cross-cultural and comparative research in Northern Ireland: insider, outsider, Other; 7 Prison officer training: transient identity during immersive ethnography; 8 The ethics of researching “hard to reach” populations: the case of “hidden” older illegal drug users and the attendant advantages of an ethical approach; 9 The keepers of secrets: ethics and the emotional labour of working with privileged populations during criminological research; 10 Dreams and nightmares: interviewing research participants who have experienced psychological trauma; 11 Fear and loathing in the Philippines: the ethics of researching President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs; 12 Conclusion: an ethical imagination