NCJ Number
180940
Date Published
1999
Length
13 pages
Annotation
This article examines how qualitative research methods provide the flexibility needed to conduct research on organized crime.
Abstract
The article discusses serious implications attached to the study of organized crime in Mexico. It attempts to determine how the country’s social system is organized so as to facilitate crime, why and how organized crime is out of control, how crime in general is structured and how it differs from organized crime, how well-equipped the willing authorities are to guide the country to a better life, and the threshold at which criticism becomes an offense. The methodological issues that emerged through the research process were researching sensitive topics and the value of ethnography. Although there are topics that are sensitive per se, much of the sensitive nature of a topic emerges from the relationship between the topic and the social context within which research is conducted. Research can be threatening when it becomes an “intrusive threat” to private, sacred or stressful areas; when it involves data on deviance and social control that could incriminate or stigmatize subjects of study; and when it relates to controversial issues where the researcher impinges upon the interests of powerful people or organizations. The study of organized crime in Mexico encompassed all of those aspects of sensitivity. Notes, references