The Hidden Measurement Crisis in Criminology
Procedural Justice as a Case Study

This Element addresses the measurement crisis by using psychometric methods to develop a measure of procedural justice in policing.

Amanda Graham (Author), Francis T. Cullen (Author), Bruce G. Link (Author)

9781009558556, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 27 March 2025

110 pages
23.5 x 15.9 x 1.5 cm, 0.31 kg

'The volume is a vital contribution that challenges the methodological complacency it diagnoses. It is academic in the best sense, providing both a rigorous theoretical argument and a practical, empirical roadmap for change. The language is clear, systematic, and appropriately technical when discussing psychometric methods, yet the underlying message - a call for greater scientific integrity and cumulative knowledge - resonates powerfully. By providing a meticulously developed benchmark scale for procedural justice and demonstrating the process by which it was created, Graham, Cullen, and Link offer not just a new tool for researchers but a template and an invitation.' Alexander Yu. Krouglov, Critical Criminology

The field of criminology is limited by a 'hidden' measurement crisis. It is hidden because scholars either are not aware of the shortcomings of their measures or have implicitly agreed that scales with certain properties merit publication. It is a crisis because the approaches used to construct measures do not employ modern systematic psychometric methods. As a result, the degree to which existing measures have methodological limitations is unknown. The purpose of this Element is to unmask this hidden crisis and provide a case study demonstrating how to build a measure of a prominent criminological construct through modern systematic psychometric methods. Using multiple surveys and item response theory, it develops a ten-item scale of procedural justice in policing. This can be used in primary research and to adjudicate existing measures. The goal is to reveal the nature of the field's measurement crisis and show a strategy for solving it.

1. Introduction
2. The measurement crisis in criminology
3. The concept of procedural justice
4. Measuring procedural justice
5. Adjudication of existing measures
6. The future of measurement: criminometrics as a research paradigm
References.

Subject Areas: Crime & criminology [JKV]