This volume investigates the significant role qualitative research plays in expanding and refining our understandings of crime and justice. It features seventeen original essays that discuss the relationship between methodology and theory. The result is a theoretically engaged volume that explores the approaches of qualitative scholars in the collection and treatment of data in criminological scholarship.

Among the key issues addressed in the volume are methodological rigor in qualitative research; movement between method, theory building, theoretical refinement and expansion; diversity of qualitative methodologies, from classic field research to contemporary innovations; and considerations of the future of qualitative criminological research.

Qualitative research use has expanded rapidly in the last twenty years. This volume of Advances in Criminological Theory presents a cogent appraisal of qualitative criminology and the ways in which rigorous qualitative research contributes to theorizing about crime and justice.