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For many years I have called myself an ethnographer. My way of pursuing social science research is to steep myself in the relevant literature and then go out into the world of human social relations and listen, speak with, and observe, people as they create and occupy places and participate in events. As an ethnographer I think it important to advance the craft and its acceptance as a valuable social science research methodology, particularly within criminology and the other policy sciences. Studies in criminal justice are largely concerned with the behaviors of marginalized persons. The ethnographic method has the capability to bring such persons into the research process, to “give them a voice,” as it were, and to channel their lived experiences into the policy formation equation.

This chapter will offer an appreciative discussion of the ethnographic method with special attention to one of its more problematic components: how fieldworkers interpret and represent data. What follows is meant as constructive critique and as an opening to conversation, rather than a definitive last word. The lens that I will use to analyze selected aspects of the ethnographic method is that of “Convict Criminology”(Ross & Richards, 2003). Convict criminology is said to provide a “new perspective” on criminology and criminal justice (Richards & Ross, 2001: 180). This perspective is rooted in the experience of its practitioners—current prison inmates and former prisoners—now working as criminal justice researchers and (primarily) as critical criminologists.