Techniques of Neutralization is a theory that explains how people can commit crimes or deviant acts and yet accept no guilt or shame. Techniques of neutralization are cognitive schema that allow the criminal or deviant to explain their behavior in such a way that it is someone else’s fault or at least not fully their fault. Matza and Sykes identified five separate techniques of neutralization 1) Denial of responsibility; 2) Denial of injury; 3) Blaming the victim; 4) Condemn the condemners; 5) Appealing to a higher loyalty. This is the original list created by Sykes and Matza but there have been lots of variations on the theme with this idea that criminals or deviants can explain away their behavior. Excuses, justifications are two other commonly studied rationales.
The task for this assignment is to create either an interview or a focus group in which you explore how criminals explain their behavior. Specifically let’s avoid the more serious crimes like murder and rape. These are serious crimes that are often very difficult for students to deal with especially if such horrific events have touched their families’ lives. Let’s focus on something less threatening or triggering. Imagine or prepare a focus group or interviews on drug dealers. More specifically let’s imagine that we are looking at drug dealers who sell narcotic drugs. Remember, that narcotic drugs can and do result in people’s deaths. It’s not exactly like murder but drug dealers selling narcotics potentially endangering the addicts’ lives. How the drug dealer mixes the narcotics whether that’s with too much fentanyl, heroin, or filler can and does result in tragedy. In summary, you need to create a research proposal for either an interview or a focus group in which you will be interviewing drug dealers who sell narcotic drugs which can and do occasionally lead to the death of the user.
The proposal MUST explicitly include the following elements.
Introduction
Topic
why selected the topic
value/importance of topic
Who are you planning to interview
Literature Review
5 articles related to your topic
Methodology
Type of Interview or focus group
Highly structured, moderately structured, non-structured.
Rapport Establishment Techniques
Location
How location effected the interview process
Tone and level of interview
Recording the interview
Techniques used.
What problems arose and how did you handle them.
How did you close the interview
If you had the interview to do over, what would you change or improve.
Appendices
Consent form
Copy of interview questions
All planned and used questions in regular font and type
Bibliography
**You’re not actually doing the interview, just writing the process on how it would be done
